SCM: Mystery Generation System

December 22, 2025

samhaine Game Design 5e, mystery, noir, Shadow City Mysteries Leave a comment

Well hello everybody. It’s been a while, because a huge amount of my game design work has been going into the Shadow City Mysteries tabletop game. If you’re reading this near the time of posting, there’s still time to preorder it before we lock the book and start production (which is happening very soon). Even if you’re not into D20 games, there are a lot of cool systems in the book that can be repurposed for other systems (like how I adjusted the Influence system for my Changeling campaign, as explained in my previous post). Below is a subject near and dear to my heart, as you’ll see by clicking the Mystery tag on this post. This system (likely better edited by that point) is one of many you’ll find in the book, so I hope you’ll check it out! You can also watch the actual play run by our creative director for more insight into the system and setting.

Introduction: What is a Mystery?

In the broadest definition, a mystery in an RPG could be anything your players (and their characters) don’t know the answer to, but can find out in play. This can include questions like, “What’s in this dungeon?” “Is the knowledge we desire available in this library?” or “What kind of powers and defenses does this opponent have?” While these can be very fun questions to answer in a tabletop game, they are neither the main focus of Shadow City Mysteries nor the kind of thing you’ll have trouble finding other resources online to help you with as a GM.

Instead, the mysteries this section is built to generate are the ones that fill out the pages of noir fiction: something bad has happened (likely a crime) and the perpetrators need to be found to keep things from getting worse, or at least to bring some kind of closure to the victims. Along the way, the PCs will learn the motives and methods behind the inciting incident by accumulating clues that eventually lead them to a conclusion as to what happened and who is to blame.

There are two major ways of generating such mysteries for RPGs.

The method that is most common, particularly in modules that must accommodate any numbers of unknown and different PC groups, is to plan everything up front. Each likely location involved in the investigation is detailed, relevant NPCs are provided with potential motives and information, and clues are spread out like coupons that can be accumulated and cashed in to move along to the next location or suspect and eventually solve the mystery. They’re often easy to run, especially if they thought through everything PCs might try both obvious and whimsical, but they can be a lot of work to produce for your own home game.

The second method is improvisational: you simply work out exactly what happened, and rely on your players’ cleverness and your own knowledge of your greater campaign to eventually bring them to a conclusion. Rather than pre-writing a particular clue to find in a location, you can just rely on your understanding of the crime to decide whether the clue exists if the PCs decide to investigate that avenue. If you’re comfortable with that much improvisation, and your players are good at proactive detective work, it’s a lot easier for your prep than pregenerating everything, and can easily accommodate players doing the unexpected. But it can be less satisfying than a fully-planned plot if your players figure out the answer early, or get stuck and can’t figure out how to proceed.

This section attempts to provide an option in between these methods. By using this system, you will generate some elements that you could use for whichever you are comfortable doing: building out a fully-fleshed plotline, or improvising a mystery.

Components

To simplify a mystery, you can think of it as having the following components.

The Hook is the core element that brings the mystery to the PCs’ attention, and makes it their responsibility to solve it. This is often as simple as a Patron or Contact bringing it to their attention or some other NPC hiring them, but might be more personal, such as a friend or relative being hurt. Part of a Hook is identifying the Victim of the crime and the Reporter who brings it to the PCs’ attention (they may be the same NPC).
Many mysteries feature a MacGuffin, particularly ones generated through the Making Shadow City Your Own rules earlier in this book. These are typically items or events that are not directly important to the PCs, but are relevant because NPCs involved in the mystery want them or answers about them, such as a stolen item, missing person, or historical event.
The path through the mystery is built from Clues, which allow the PCs to piece together what happened, who was responsible, and potentially how to recover something that was lost. In Shadow City Mysteries, these are often awarded from relevant skill checks investigating a Location or interviewing a Suspect or Witness, with greater success providing more information.
The course of a mystery may lead to one or more Locations that might contain additional Clues. These are generally physical spaces, but experimental plots may use the term more loosely (e.g., the time of night that the killer always strikes might count as a Location). PCs may visit many places during their investigation, but only ones relevant to the mystery are generated as Locations by this system.
Nearly all mysteries will also feature various NPCs who might be interviewed for Clues. Some of these are Suspects, though whether the PCs encounter them early or only near the conclusion is a function of different types of mystery. Others are potential Witnesses, who often have their own reasons for hiding information from the PCs unless properly convinced. Some are both, while some are simple bystanders that the PCs have to eliminate as viable information sources.
Generally, a mystery will have Complications planned ahead to make things more interesting. These can be anything that interferes with the PCs’ peaceful and steady completion of their investigation. They might be unrelated plotlines that happen to coincide, or may be the result of NPCs attempting to influence the investigation’s outcome.
Ultimately, any mystery should have Revelations. These might be limited to the means, motive, and perpetrator that are self-contained within the event itself. But they often uncover new threads that your PCs can pull on to maintain momentum throughout your campaign.

Mystery Types

This system generates a mystery revolving around the following types:

The most dramatic mysteries revolve around Violence. Murder is the most iconic (particularly since the victim cannot usually identify their attacker), but might also include assault, poisoning, or a hit and run where the victim may be the person hiring the PCs to find who hurt them.
Some crimes involve a person’s Disappearance. They might have clearly been kidnapped (possibly with a ransom delivered), or might just be a missing person with no clear explanation. An unfortunate number of these are eventually revealed to be murders where the body was hidden.
Lower-stakes than death and disappearance are crimes of Lost Property, such as theft, burglary, arson, or a full heist. Typically, the victim is the person whose property was taken and wants it back (or at least payback for the loss).
Some mysteries involve uncovering a Hidden Antagonist. The victim is usually someone who is being blackmailed, extorted, stalked, framed, or otherwise threatened. Solving the mystery means finding out who is causing the problem and getting them to stop. A subset of this type of mystery is Espionage, where a person or organization thinks they are being spied upon or sabotaged, and want the PCs to prove it and stop it. On a lighter note, this might be some Immature crime, like pranks or vandalism (though perhaps those are just the outward signs of something more sinister).
Most commonly handled by PCs that are active private investigators are crimes around Relationships, such as trying to prove adultery or some business crime (e.g., fraud, embezzlement, or corruption). Run-of-the-mill jobs of this type are often just narrated in downtime, so if they reach the level of active plots, something complicated is going on that may feed into one of the more dramatic mystery types.
Finally, especially in higher-level play, mysteries may be something Esoteric, where the PCs are uncovering some kind of ancient secret or finding long-hidden treasure. This tends to serve as the MacGuffin that sets off another type of mystery.

Rolling Up a Mystery

The following section provides tables you can roll on to generate various elements of your mystery. Like all random tables, these are meant to guide your creativity as a GM. You are free to choose from any table instead of rolling, or reroll if a result doesn’t make sense to you. Realizing you don’t like an option suggested by a random generator helps you get to the better idea floating around in the back of your head. Some of these options will be more important to different types of mystery, so you can work them in if they seem relevant or discard them otherwise.

Type

1d100	Type	Subtype
1-11	Violence	Murder
12-19		Assault
20-22		Poisoning
23-24		Hit and Run
25-30	Disappearance	Kidnapping
31-35		Missing Person
36-40	Lost Property	Theft
41-45		Burglary
46-47		Arson
48-50		Heist
51-56	Hidden Antagonist	Blackmail
57-61		Extortion
62-67		Stalker
68-71		Framing
72-75		Threats
76-78	Espionage	Spying
79-81		Sabotage
82-83	Immature	Pranks
84-85		Vandalism
86-89	Relationships	Adultery
90-92		Fraud
93-95		Embezzlement
96-97		Corruption
98-99	Esoteric	Ancient Secret
100		Hidden Treasure

Hooks

1d20	The Victim is…
1	one of the PCs or the PC organization (not for murder)
2-5	a friend/relative of one or more PCs
6-7	a Contact or the Patron (usually not for murder)
8-10	someone unfriendly to the PCs (they have to clear themselves as suspects)
11-17	a stranger to the PCs
18-20	multiple people (a business, friend group, or other organization)

1d20	The Reporter is…
1	the victim (likely through a letter or recording, if missing or murdered)
2-5	a friend/relative of one or more PCs
6-7	a Contact or the Patron (they have a direct relationship to the victim)
8-10	someone unfriendly to the Victim (they want the PCs to clear their name)
11-17	a stranger to the PCs (usually connected by a Contact or the Patron)
18-20	a faction or other organization that enlists the PCs to handle it instead of the cops

1d20	The person’s faction is (roll for both the Victim and Reporter, unless it’s obvious from context)…
1-2	the same faction as one of the PCs (decide randomly or choose the most relevant PC)
3	the main faction supported by the Patron or Contact (if they are involved in the mystery)
4-5	a faction that none of the PCs is a member of (which limits the PCs’ ease of investigating)
6-8	the Society of Ravens
9-11	the Court of Rats
12-13	the Brass Consortium
14-15	the Iron Union
16-17	the Church of Astra
18	the Cult of Tenebrous
19-20	unaligned

1d20	If there is a MacGuffin, it is…
1-3	a valuable and easily-recognizable item of art
4-6	documents/plans full of secrets (possibly in a case or other container)
7-9	an unassuming item with a hidden compartment or esoteric powers
10-12	a weapon used in other crimes (or that is a military prototype)
13-14	a toxic or otherwise hazardous substance that leaves detectable residue
15-16	an oversized object that is difficult to transport secretly
17-18	a particular code phrase or similar clue to a greater mystery
19-20	a person that someone feels possessive of, or who knows many secrets

Suspects

In addition to actual Perpetrator, generate additional NPCs that will be Suspects that can be eliminated. In most scenarios, you should have at least three potential Suspects, and you might add 1d4 more for a Normal mission or 2d6 more for a Milestone mission.

1d20	The Suspect is…
1-2	the same faction as one of the PCs (decide randomly or choose the most relevant PC)
3-4	the Reporter (could be trying to throw people off the scent/control the investigation)
5-6	the same faction as the Victim
7-9	the opposed faction to the Victim’s (Society of Ravens vs. Court of Rats, Brass Consortium vs. Iron Union, or Church of Astra vs. Cult of Tenebrous)
10	a member of the Society of Ravens
11-13	a member of the Court of Rats
14	a member of the Brass Consortium
15	a member of the Iron Union
16	a member of the Church of Astra
17-18	a member of the Cult of Tenebrous
19-20	unaligned with a faction

1d20	The actual Perpetrator’s motive is…
1-2	an accident or crime of opportunity (with little obvious motive to investigate)
3-5	money/greed (somehow, the Perpetrator expected to make money off the crime)
6-8	jealousy/envy (the Perpetrator resents the Victim and wanted something they had)
9-10	planned revenge (the Perpetrator has been planning to “get back” at the Victim for some time)
11-13	crime of passion (the Perpetrator decided to do the crime in the heat of the moment)
14-15	manipulation/corruption (the Perpetrator was convinced or hired to do the crime by a close contact)
16-17	obsession (the Perpetrator acted on a twisted belief they love the Victim)
18-19	just business (the Victim was caught up in a scheme that wasn’t personal)
20	esoteric (the crime may be for ritual purposes or otherwise weird or mystical)

1d20	This non-Perpetrator is a Suspect because…
1-2	they were in the area of the crime
3-5	they had a financial motive for the crime
6-8	they have had bad things to say about the Victim in the past
9-10	they and the Victim are known enemies
11-13	they and the Victim argued shortly before the crime
14-15	they are a known employee/enforcer for one of the Victim’s enemies
16-17	they are the Victim’s significant other or known to be in love with the Victim
18-19	the crime stands to benefit them in other ways
20	they are some kind of cultist or crazy person that had opportunity

Witnesses

In addition to the Suspects, who may also have information about the crime, identify or create NPCs that are specifically Witnesses. There should be a similar number of them to Suspects. These individuals have some obvious reason why they aren’t Suspects (which easily stand up to scrutiny, which Suspect alibis might not), but also have a reason why PCs might not just easily get information out of them. Most Witnesses should be people that can be placed as in the vicinity of the crime, but some might be identified by the Suspects as someone that can provide them an alibi.

1d20	The Witness is evasive when questioned by the PCs because they…
1-2	weren’t supposed to be in the area of the crime, and don’t want to admit they were
3-5	are a friend/relative of one of the Suspects, and are protecting them because they might be guilty
6-7	don’t like the PCs and don’t want to answer questions from them
8-11	are involved in an unrelated crime that might come out if questioned
12-13	were/are intoxicated, distracted, or just not paying attention even though they should have clear answers
14-15	don’t answer questions without a lawyer present, as a rule
16-17	have too much information, most of it irrelevant, and are excited to be questioned
18-19	could provide an alibi for a Suspect, but hate them and would like to see them in trouble
20	aren’t evasive, but because they’re so forthcoming, it feels like they’re hiding something

Locations

If it’s not clearly suggested by the NPCs involved, you can use the following table to decide on various Locations. A minor mission might only have the scene of the crime, perhaps one or two intermediate Locations where Witnesses and Suspects are interviewed, and the finale site where the Perpetrator is discovered or pursued. Normal and Milestone missions can have proportionately more, with clues sending the PCs all over Soreta over multiple nights to obtain more information and find more Witnesses and Suspects.

1d20	Location
1	Home of the Victim, Suspect, or Witness
2	Workplace of the Victim or a Suspect
3	Club where the Victim or a Suspect hangs out
4	Transit station (train or bus)
5	Dark alley
6	Society of Ravens mansion
7	Court of Rats safehouse
8	Brass Consortium venue (backstage)
9	Iron Union factory
10	Church of Astra temple
11	Cult of Tenebrous bolthole (beneath the city)
12	Police station
13	Warehouse
14	The docks
15	Government building
16	School campus
17	Upscale hotel
18	Seedy motel
19	Pop-up street market
20	Liminal/unreal mystical space

Building Out Your Mystery

With the randomly-generated seeds, you should now be able to start figuring out what actually happened. The first step is to gather up all the archetypes you’ve rolled and start giving them more details in relation to the other elements. See the examples in the sidebar.

Examples
In these examples, the PCs are a mixed group, primarily Court of Rats and Cult of Tenebrous, working for the Rat King as their Patron.

Example 1
The first mystery rolled is Sabotage, where the Victim is an Iron Union member unfriendly to the PCs and the Reporter is a stranger from the Society of Ravens connected by the Patron. The MacGuffin is a code phrase or greater clue.The Perpetrator’s faction is opposed to the Victim’s (the Brass Consortium) and their motive is jealousy or envy. Additional Suspects include: a member of the Court of Rats that argued with the Victim before the crime and a member of the Iron Union who also argued with them.

Three witnesses are evasive because they were drunk at the time, are a friend of one of the Suspects, and could provide an alibi for a Suspect they hate.

Locations include a dark alley, transit station, home of an involved NPC, and a Society of Ravens mansion.

This combination of factions suggests that the Reporter is a wealthy individual who was funding an Iron Union project, who has used his connections to blame the Rat King for an act of sabotage, and the Rat King has tasked the PCs to prove it wasn’t them. This is complicated by one Court of Rats suspect, and the Victim being inclined to distrust any proof the PCs find as a cover-up. The Locations suggest the job was at the Reporter’s mansion, and that’s where the initial investigation takes place, with the investigation eventually leading to a Brass Consortium counterweight, who sabotaged the project as cover for stealing the MacGuffin from the mansion.

Example 2
The next mystery is a Missing Person, where the Victim is a stranger to the PCs who is a member of the Church. The Reporter is also a member of the Church, and was unfriendly to the Victim who is the prime suspect. If a MacGuffin is required, it’s an art item.

The real Perpetrator is unaligned with a faction and was jealous of the Victim. Other suspects include: a member of the Cult of Tenebrous who’s had had bad things to say about the Victim in the past and a member of the Court of Rats who somehow benefits from the disappearance.

Witnesses include someone who doesn’t like the PCs, someone involved in an unrelated crime, and a friend of one of the Suspects.

Locations include a Court of Rats safehouse, Government building, Liminal/unreal mystical space, and Church of Astra temple.

This suggests something heavy into Church politics, where one of the Cult PCs might get asked to investigate because the Reporter knows they dislike everyone in the Church equally and haven’t already jumped to judgement. The presence of a liminal space and the MacGuffin suggests that the unaligned Perpetrator may have coveted the life the Victim had and inadvertently caused both of them to disappear into a hidden, mystical space by triggering an art object within the temple. Ultimately, conversations with the other Suspects (including the Reporter) and Witnesses will indicate that the Victim couldn’t have actually left the temple, leading the PCs to use their mystical abilities to find the liminal space.

Once you’ve worked out the scenario the randomized elements suggest to you, it’s time to formalize exactly what happened. Answer the standard reporters’ questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how? Figure out what information Witnesses might have observed or heard about, and the general path through the Locations you expect the PCs to take. The it’s time to set up the Clues, Complications, and Revelations.

Clues

Sometimes, the scenario you have in mind will make it completely obvious what there is to find (e.g., a brutal murder with the body left behind allows all kinds of forensics). If it’s not obvious, start looking at the available proficiencies. In general, each mystery should involve as many different skills as you can reasonably target, which gives multiple PCs chances to shine and makes them feel smart for picking skills that aren’t as generally useful. Don’t just rely too hard on Perception, Insight, and Investigation: save those for the areas of investigation that turn up general information about crime scenes or witnesses, and suggest other skills or tool proficiencies that might generate specific information.

Here are some suggested uses for various proficiencies:

Strength and Dexterity skills (Acrobatics, Athletics, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth) aren’t usually used to learn information, but might make it possible for a PCs to get to information that is out of the way or off limits.
Charisma skills (Deception, Intimidation, Performance, and Persuasion) might be used to get Witnesses to reveal information that they know. Depending on how they are initially treated and their reason for not wanting to reveal information, different skills might have Advantage or Disadvantage to get them to give up their most vital clues.
Awareness skills (Insight, Investigation, Perception), as noted, might be used when nothing else makes sense and to zero in on what other skills could provide better information.
Artisan’s Tools proficiencies can be used to precisely analyze or repair objects or materials related to the mystery of the type the tool can create. This might involve quick information at the scene or detailed forensics at a workshop.
Animal Handling: Were there any animals involved? Is there a pet on site whose behavior might provide a clue?
Arcana: Is there something Cult or otherwise mysticism related? Is information encoded?
History: Has something like this happened before? Is an item of historical significance? Is someone involved important and not mentioning that fact?
Medicine: Is there a body to examine? Are there strange injuries or maladies afflicting the Victim?
Nature: Are there any odd plants, insects, or other natural detritus at the crime scene or attached to the Victim? Would knowledge about the weather conditions at the time of the crime reveal something?
Religion: Does this crime have something to do with the Church? Is there symbolism (intentional or unintentional) involved in the crime?
Survival: Were there any tracks left behind? Does the way someone would have to move through the area suggest places where the Perpetrator might have disturbed something or left evidence?

Typically, it makes sense to give out some kind of clue at DC 5, and additional information for every 5 points the PC exceeds the DC (e.g., 10, 15, 20, etc.). By starting at 5, the PC will likely get some small amount of data that can suggest additional things to investigate, while higher rolls provide more actionable intelligence.

In general, you want to provide enough information on minimal successes that the players can eventually solve the mystery the long way, rather than becoming completely stuck because they’re all having a night of bad rolls. Conversely, you want to provide additional details for high rolls so players feel rewarded for rolling well and/or having high bonuses in relevant proficiencies.

Complications

Complications are optional. Particularly in your early mysteries, you might want to have everything be relatively straightforward, so you can get a sense of your players’ comfort with investigations and they can get used to how you are running them. Once you have a few under your belt (or if you’re playing with a group who have solved investigations in your previous campaigns), you might want to introduce Complications.

A non-exhaustive list of possible Complications includes:

A Clue leads to a completely unrelated Suspect that must be eliminated from consideration (i.e., a Red Herring)
A Witness or Suspect sends the PCs to a dangerous Location or hires enemies to attack them (the fight should provide some additional Clues)
Something unrelated (such as bad weather) makes it much harder to pursue the investigation along the current route (this might also be time pressure for the investigation, to finish at a location before it’s too late)
An unrelated mission or the PCs’ day jobs require their attention so they cannot focus entirely on the mystery
Other antagonists want to prevent the mystery from being solved or obtain the MacGuffin
The crime, Victim, and/or Reporter are not what they seem (e.g., Victim wasn’t kidnapped but fled, Reporter is the Perpetrator, the crime was to hide a different crime)
A third party stole an important Clue/the MacGuffin
The Perpetrator or Witnesses are also the Victim of a different crime, making interviewing/punishing them much harder
The law or other major Faction don’t want the PCs involved (which can turn into just Antagonists trying to stop them, but may feed into issues of Influence)

Revelations

For long-term campaigns, it is generally ideal for the solution to the mystery to provide a Revelation that impacts the rest of the campaign, rather than being a full self-contained mystery-of-the-week. This can be pieces of lore relevant to the campaign that were functionally incidental to the mystery itself (e.g., in interviewing a witness, the PCs learn a secret about their Patron). It might also be something shockingly deep (e.g., the Perpetrator’s motivation for spying on the faction that hired the PCs is revealed as trying to find a dark secret about that faction that the PCs were previously unaware of). Mystery elements are also a type of Revelation: each NPC met and each Location visited can be relevant again later in the campaign with the additional context of the mystery.

Ultimately, after solving a mystery, the PCs should have new insight into the campaign’s plot, and new motives of their own when they interact with elements touched on in the course of the mystery.

SCM Mystery Generator Download

D&D 5e: Desert Mythos Magic Items

October 14, 2024

samhaine Game Design 5e, D&D, items, Pathfinder Comments Off on D&D 5e: Desert Mythos Magic Items

The PCs for my campaign of Strange Aeons (converted to 5e) finally got to a large desert city where they might be able to spend their pile of accumulated gold on something worthwhile for 13th level characters. I was using Sane Magical Prices as a guideline, and trying to keep things in the range where everyone in the five-member party might be able to afford something. Thus, some of the more powerful options (like the Staff of the Woodlands) got adjusted to the point it would make sense for shopkeeps to want to let them go for less than six figures. I was also erring on non-attunement for the weapons, to keep straightforward +2 items from being more attractive.

The party is currently an evocation wizard, a stars druid, an armorer artificer, a lore bard/swashbuckler rogue, and a beast barbarian/hexblade warlock/watchers paladin (I know). So the items were designed to appeal to stuff they might want.

Weapons

Asmodeus’ Star

Weapon (Morningstar), legendary (20000 gp)

You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this wickedly-barbed mithral morningstar.

The weapon has 18 charges. When you hit with the weapon, you may utter the command word to add 3d6 force damage to the attack, and it consumes charges equal to the highest die rolled of these three dice. If there are not enough remaining charges, it still does the damage, but does six force damage to you for every charge in excess. When you kill a target with this weapon, or the target dies adjacent to you before your next turn after dealing damage, it recovers charges equal to the target’s level or CR.

Dawnblade

Weapon (Scimitar), rare (5000 gp)

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this gold-filigree shining steel scimitar.

It always sheds bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. When you hit a target with this weapon, it deals an additional 1d6 radiant damage. If you critically hit with this weapon, the target takes an additional 5 fire damage and is set ablaze, suffering 1d6 fire damage at the end of each of its turns until someone takes an action to extinguish the flames.

Drunkard’s Foil

Weapon (Rapier), very rare (8000 gp)

You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this magic, cold iron rapier.

While wielding it, you can never have disadvantage on your attack rolls with it due to the poisoned or frightened conditions. Additionally while wielding it, due to its stabilizing influence you have advantage on Dexterity checks and saving throws to balance, resist falling or being knocked prone, and similar effects.

On any turn where you make the attack action with this weapon, you may drink a potion or other beverage as a bonus action rather than an action.

Duelist’s Mirror

Weapon (Rapier), rare (3500 gp)

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic, mirror-polished mithral rapier. It weighs half as much as a normal weapon of that type.

Once per day, you can utter the command word as a bonus action to cause an illusory duplicate of yourself to appear within five feet of you or on the opposite side of an enemy you are currently adjacent to. This duplicate has AC equal to 10 + your Dexterity modifier, and resists grapples, shoves, and similar attempts to make contact with your Dexterity (Acrobatics). If someone makes contact, they pass through harmlessly and know it is an illusion. Otherwise it moves in its space similarly to you, and reacts realistically to effects that require a saving throw as if it had succeeded. It lasts for one minute.

As a bonus action, you can cause it to move up to your speed (it provokes attacks of opportunity normally). After you make an attack with this weapon, if the duplicate is within 30 feet, you have a 50% chance of teleporting to trade places with the illusion. This transfer is seamless, so will cause opponents without special senses to not know whether you have swapped.

Additionally, due to the reflective nature of the blade, you have resistance against Radiant damage as long as you are wielding it and not incapacitated.

Ghartok’s Flindbars

Weapon (Flail), very rare (8000 gp)

You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this unusual brass-and-ebony flail.

While wielding this weapon, you have resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition. Additionally while wielding it, If you hit a target with a bite attack you may consume a part of the target to heal an amount of damage equal to the damage you dealt. You may use this healing ability once per short or long rest.

Khopesh of Disarming

Weapon (Longsword), rare (3000 gp)

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this hooked bronze sword.

While wielding it, you gain access to the Disarming Attack battlemaster Fighter maneuver. If you do not have any superiority dice, you have a single 1d6 die that recovers when you take a short or long rest. If you have superiority dice, you gain an additional one of your normal size that can only be used on Disarming Attack and while wielding this weapon.

Nethys’ Chaos Hammer

Weapon (Warhammer), legendary (20000 gp)

You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this adamantine-headed warhammer, with a bleached wooden haft.

The weapon has 9 charges, and resets to 0 at dawn and dusk. When you hit a target with the hammer, it automatically dispels (as if having cast dispel magic) the lowest-level magical spell on the target, and gains charges equal to that spell’s level.

When you critically hit with the weapon, it casts a random wizard spell of a level equal to the number of charges remaining. You may choose to make yourself or the target of your attack the target of the spell, once you know what it does. Area of effect spells are centered on the target. The weapon can maintain concentration on one effect, if necessary, and only loses concentration upon casting another concentration spell.

As an adamantine weapon, any successful attack with the weapon against an object is treated as a critical hit.

Pickman’s Model

Weapon (War pick), very rare (4500 gp)

You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this oddly-proportioned war pick.

When you critically hit with this weapon, both you and the target must make a Charisma saving throw, with a DC equal to the damage dealt, or suffer the Frightened condition for one minute. You may each repeat the saving throw at the end of each of your turns. The weapon is the source of the Frightened condition.

You have advantage on Charisma checks against ghouls when wielding this weapon.

Vigil Officer’s Axe

Weapon (Battleaxe), rare (4000 gp)

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this ancient bronze battleaxe.

While wielding it, you are resistant to fire damage and have advantage on checks and saving throws to resist the detrimental effects of being inside an ongoing fire, such as suffocation from smoke and heat exhaustion. Attacks with the weapon have advantage against wood, plaster, or similar flammable structural objects.

Foci

Alaznist’s Angry Red Orb

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement by a wizard) (2000 gp)

While you are holding this ruby red orb, you can use it as a spellcasting focus for your wizard spells, and you gain a +2 bonus to spell attack rolls and to the saving throw DCs of your wizard spells.

When you deal damage with a wizard spell, you may choose to deal maximum damage instead of rolling. If you do so, you take the same amount of damage yourself. You may use this property once per long rest.

Sentience. The angry red orb is a sentient chaotic evil item with an Intelligence of 15, a Wisdom of 10, and a Charisma of 5. It has hearing and normal vision out to a range of 30 feet, and can communicate by transmitting emotion.

Personality. Its purpose is to destroy, particularly other wizards that are not sufficiently deferential to the attuned, and may come into conflict with the wielder if they have not been destructive or imperious enough. Do not taunt the angry red orb.

Minderhal’s Ball Peen #7

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement by an artificer or forge cleric) (8000 gp)

This hammer is sized to be a small tool for a stone giant, but can be used as a mace by medium or small characters. If wielded in this way, you gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. This feature does not require attunement.

If attuned, you may use this as a spellcasting focus. While holding it, you gain a +2 bonus to the spell attack rolls and saving throw DCs of your artificer or cleric spells. Additionally, you may use the booming blade cantrip, even if you do not already know it.

Finally, you have advantage on Blacksmith’s Tools checks while wielding this item, and on attack rolls to damage metal or stone items.

Staff of the Parchlands

Staff, rare (requires attunement by a druid) (10000 gp)

This staff can be wielded as a magic quarterstaff that grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it. While holding it, you have a +1 bonus to spell attack rolls and saving throw DCs.

The staff has 8 charges for the following properties. You may expend one or more hit dice after a long rest to recover an equal number of charges. If you expend the last charge, it deals 4d6 necrotic damage to you as it drains your bodily moisture and recovers one charge.

Spells. You can use an action to expend one or more of the staff’s charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC: Abi-Dalzim’s horrid wilting (centered on self only, 8 charges), absorb elements (1 charge), control winds (5 charges), dust devil (2 charges), pyrotechnics (2 charges), wall of sand (3 charges), zephyr strike (1 charge).

Cactus Form. You can use an action to plant the staff in the ground and transform it into a cactus. The five foot square it occupies counts as difficult terrain and anyone passing through it must make a Dexterity saving throw or take 4d4 piercing damage. The cactus has an AC of 14 and 18 HP, taking double damage from slashing attacks but half from bludgeoning and piercing. It casts absorb elements automatically if targeted with a spell, consuming a charge. You must destroy the cactus to recover the staff, provoking the same save with each melee attack to avoid taking 4d4 damage. If you take a long rest in the desert while it does not have full charges, the staff will often contrive to use this ability overnight, rooting itself in the nearest valid location. If left in cactus form, it recovers one charge per day at noon, and returns to staff form on its own once it again has full charges.

SCM: Crafting System

September 23, 2024

samhaine Game Design 5e, Craft, D&D, Shadow City Mysteries 1 Comment

The Shadow City Mysteries RPG crowdfunding campaign is currently live on Backerkit. The discussion below refers to the rules on pages 11-12 the Quickstart.

Crafting has always been kind of a challenge in D&D. The video games that have used it as inspiration have packed their gear lists with piles of granular upgrades, so putting in a system to generate gear was pretty easy. Craft a new item that’s slightly better than what you can buy at a shop for your tier, but not too powerful for your level? No problem. But mundane D&D items are generally on a much shallower advancement track, if they have one at all. And their listed cost tends to be low enough that buying them is pocket change for adventurers very quickly.

Thus all “crafting” in D&D tends to converge on enchanting. Magic items are both expensive enough that crafting them is a cost break and random enough that crafting lets you tailor your gear to your needs in a way the loot drops might not. And if the one player in the campaign willing to engage with the crafting system is a character without access to the relevant spellcasting prereqs? Not a lot of crafting gets done.

The Maker class in SCM at least partially solves the “who is going to want to do crafting?” issue: if someone plays that class, you can assume they want you, the DM, to give them some downtime cycles that they can use on crafting stuff. We’re trying to give every class something to do crafting-wise, in case other PCs want to engage (particularly if there’s a Maker in the party and the other PCs don’t want to be left out). And, similarly, we’re trying to make sure the Maker isn’t useless at other stuff, just sitting around waiting for the next time to make something cool.

The official solution to these problems is the Artificer. I don’t actually love the Artificer. It mostly comes down to dissociated mechanics: Why can a 7th level Artificer make three magic items for free with a long rest if they have none, but take weeks to make the fourth at full price (if allowed by the DM)? No reason other than game balance. I feel like the Tony Stark fantasy isn’t fully served by being able to make an arbitrary number of items quickly and for free, it’s about gathering the right resources, finding the time, and crafting things to actually get a leg up on the competition.

A lot of this also comes down to how much downtime there is in a campaign. If your PCs go level 1 to 20 as part of a non-stop thrill ride of trying to keep the campaign villain from enacting a scheme or to beat the ticking clock to the end of the world, you probably don’t have time to craft, even if you really want to. Meanwhile, a pastoral game that features the heroes of a small town periodically fending off threats to their home can have tons of downtime. My college game was of the latter type, and the party wizard wound up being way too powerful for his level because of it (I probably also shouldn’t have relaxed the XP cost rules from 3e).

We’re trying to square that circle in SCM from a few different directions. The first is keeping downtime actions fairly granular. You can make real progress on your projects during the day, without impeding your investigating/adventuring at night. The second is putting in rules for repairing items that is basically just crafting with a lower progress counter, since part of the work is already done. The DM can give out broken equipment (or repairable clues, like we use in the quickstart adventure) as a way to scratch that crafting itch even in a compressed time frame. The third is just planning on having some very solid DM advice on how to structure time in a campaign. This genre isn’t as big on zero-to-hero, end-of-the-world thrill rides, so it makes sense to clue DMs in on what expectations we had for ratio of downtime to uptime when designing the mechanics.

As mentioned last week, another key factor of the crafting system is the orders of magnitude rule: the tier of crafting is directly based on the number of digits in the item’s price. In addition to my own little idiosyncratic ideas about accessibility of purchases going up as each zero falls from the price tag, it’s meant to be a really quick way to figure out how difficult a crafting project is. No complicated lookup tables for item type and cost, you can just turn the price tag directly into the numbers for crafting it.

The system as written in the quickstart is still in flux, and I’m hoping a lot of people try it out before we get past the point of no return on writing the final book. My intuition is that there are some weird breakpoints where you might prefer that, say, the $999 item (rank 3, 99 progress required) was actually $1,000 (rank 4, 10 progress required). But I won’t know for sure until we get more playtesting done to make sure it feels fair throughout.

If this sounds cool to you, please check out the Quickstart and consider backing the project!

SCM: Lifestyle and Influence

September 16, 2024

samhaine Game Design 5e, D&D, Shadow City Mysteries 1 Comment

The Shadow City Mysteries RPG crowdfunding campaign is currently live on Backerkit. The discussion below refers to the rules on pages 11-12 the Quickstart.

A classic problem in modern games is what to do about money. D&D is usually strongly-focused on cash management, accounting for things down to the copper piece, while many other major games just abstract things to a resources rating (which may or may not have ways to overspend your rating and lower it). The D&D model is a problem for any game where you’re making a lot of small purchases: even at low level, I’ve never had a player thrilled to do bookkeeping when they buy dinner and a night at a cheap inn. Conversely, an abstract resources model can make money completely irrelevant to the campaign, even when cash payouts should be a meaningful reward. In games where you can buy your way into being a multimillionaire at chargen, “Why can’t we just solve the problem with money?” becomes a major question to contend with in scenario design.

I have this vague theory in real life that the order of magnitude of the cost of something gives you a pretty good idea of how affordable to you it is, depending on your own wealth level. People that can spend $1 without thinking about it probably spend $10 with only a little consideration, but have to think about a $100 purchase and really budget for $1,000, while $10,000 is a once-every-few-years purchase and $100,000 is only available with a major loan. However, someone that makes twice as much sets each of those levels at $2, $20, etc.

But we pretty quickly found that might be mostly applicable to the current value of the American dollar and class stratification in the early 21st century. It still exists as a useful piece of simplification for the crafting system (discussed next week), but didn’t make as much sense for a setting with costs targeting more at 1930s prices and wealth. We still wanted there to be a “petty cash” sort of benefit that was almost entirely there to let players not have to do bookkeeping for the small stuff, and have that be variable based on your current income.

The interesting thing about D&D is the standardization of ability score math. As much as it’s become more of a sacred cow than a necessary feature (since setting your ability scores to an odd number does little or nothing for you), the standardization of the math as 10 = +0 and everything else scaling up or down from there is built in. If your Lifestyle is rated on the same scale, suddenly it becomes both a value and a modifier. And you can do fun stuff with modifiers.

It’s not fully explained in the Quickstart, but Lifestyle isn’t just something you buy as you get a cash reward and then drop back down when you no longer need it. You buy it up incrementally, and it decreases incrementally in slow months: you can’t make it to high society instantly, even with a major windfall, but neither will you be living in the gutter after one month of missed rent. Characters have an income rating that’s dice they get to roll to see how much money came in from their day jobs, and that’s tuned for most PCs to even out around Lifestyle 10. Cash rewards from adventures and increased income dice from other sources allow them to gradually improve their Lifestyles. And hopefully the things you can do with that rating make it worthwhile for everyone to want it higher.

One of the main things it applies to is Influence: it’s just easier for the wealthy to enact large-scale social change.

The Influence system started conceptually as whether we were going to invent another social combat system. I have a ton of thoughts on social encounters and the standard social skills, which are probably evident to long-term readers of this blog. But various DMs have their own thoughts on how to run a social scene, and a formalized system for that kind of thing is likely to get ignored at most tables anyway, especially in a campaign with a lot of talking to NPCs. Rather than social combat, for roleplayed interactions we’re opting to add a few class features that players can activate and giving DMs advice on how to build witnesses and other conversational targets common to the genre in a way that makes it easier to write a satisfying social encounter (using rules as much as you’re comfortable with).

These conversations can still feed into the Influence system, which is more about long-term social goals. Did that conversation go well but didn’t seem to really make much mechanical difference? What if it got you points toward a larger social objective?

In Shadow City, even powerful faction heads like the Rat King are not unassailable: there isn’t a king that can unilaterally decide that something the PCs convince them of is what’s going to happen. Even kings in the real world would struggle with making big decisions that their key supporters hate. To take big swings on a city-wide scale, you need to win hearts and minds. The example in the Quickstart is getting the cops to consider your party as independent investigators allowed to look into a murder. Other examples might be electing or removing officials from power, moving an area to a different faction’s control, getting a piece of illegal tech licensed, starting or ending a faction war, getting a larger group to organize against a threat, and so on.

Honestly, a lot of what the system is doing is allowing the DM to go, “Yes. You plead your case to the person in charge. They’re cool with whatever PC shenanigan you want to do and are being pretty overbearing about. But you’re going to have to convince more people.” Maybe I just have an issue with my players running roughshod over whatever important NPCs I let them talk to, but I bet that experience is pretty universal. The Influence system lets you quantify whether the players have accumulated enough social effort towards putting their schemes into motion, rather than them feeling like they made a strong case to one NPC and therefore all the armies of the realm should back them up.

Plus, players like to roll dice and see a number go up. Knowing they are at least making progress toward getting what they want is a stress relief valve for a murky, heavy-roleplaying world of fragile alliances.

The full system will include rules for how opposing NPCs can fight back against PC schemes. It’s one thing to gradually talk to NPCs enough that they finally cave to what the players want to do. It’s another if they need to race against a clock to beat their rivals with a competing agenda, or at least identify them so they can take them off the social chessboard.

If this sounds cool to you, please check out the Quickstart and consider backing the project!

Shadow City Mysteries

September 10, 2024

samhaine Game Design, Setting Design, Video Game Design 5e, D&D, noir, Shadow City Mysteries Comments Off on Shadow City Mysteries

Hey all! Long time, no posts. My radio silence has a lot to do with not liking the new WordPress posting experience (and I can’t even open the dashboard in Firefox anymore), working hard to figure out how to become fanfic famous, and just generally running campaigns that don’t lend themselves to a lot of house rules that are interesting to share (though I have many new feelings about how many OP powers slipped into Changeling: the Dreaming 20th without playtesting).

But also, for the last couple of years I’ve been working with several friends to put together Shadow City Mysteries. The high concept for the setting is, “a Clockwork Noir that is Blade Runner by way of Lovecraft Country set in Frank Miller’s Sin City.” It’s a low-magic fantasy world that’s managed to hit a level of civilization that looks a lot from the outside like the settings of many early-20th-century noir films. But there’s enough mysticism and weird technology (most of which is based on an inexplicably-rotating material that allows self-powering clockwork) to keep it interesting for the genre fiction set.

Also, due to a divine calamity some centuries ago, the world is literally in black and white, save for the few pops of color from supernatural things and the mystery stone that powers technology.

We are working on several types of media for the setting, including a narrative adventure game that you can wishlist on Steam, but today’s release is more at home in this blog since we’re doing a 5e-compatible roleplaying game. In addition to building full new classes and subclasses to support the setting, we’re putting in a bunch of other subsystems like influence, crafting, and stronghold building for players and city/relationship map and mystery creation for DMs. So hopefully even if you aren’t huge into D&D, there are still a bunch of useful ideas in there for any city- or mystery-based campaign.

You can back it now!

And if you are at all curious before backing, we have an extensive quickstart guide (at the top of that page) with an introductory adventure and taste of some of the subsystems. I plan to talk about them in a little more detail here over the next couple of weeks.

D&D 5e: Treasure Averages

August 22, 2022

samhaine Game Design 5e, D&D, items 1 Comment

I revisited and expanded my treasure counts from this post. This is basically a way to determine whether you’re giving out treasure in line with what the DMG assumes (I suspect most people are not; all totaled like this, it feels like more than I’ve seen in most campaigns I’ve played in). Obviously, you can give more or less for your table, but I suspect with the way it’s locked behind random tables, incidental loot, and variable numbers of hoard per tier, most DMs don’t even know what is anticipated.

Overview

Based on DMG suggestions, a party of four PCs should acquire the following values across the tiers of play:

Tier	Levels	Total GP Value	Magic Items	Hoard Value	Individual Value	Magic Value
1	1-4	10,203	72%	2,630	180	7,393
2	5-10	142,034	36%	81,797	8,835	51,402
3	11-16	852,533	42%	434,550	55,873	362,110
4	17-20	3,824,977	23%	2,688,200	254,100	882,677

	Items
Tier	Common	Uncommon	Rare	Very Rare	Legendary
1	5.4	5.7	1.9
2	9	16.2	6.8	1
3	3.6	7.9	10.9	8.3	1.3
4		0.2	5.2	14.2	6.4

For example, across the entirety of tier 1 (levels 1-4), the party should find 10,203 gp value of treasure, 72% of it in magic items (or 2,630 gp value in hoards, 180 gp value in individual treasure, and 7,393 gp value in magic items). That magic item value is on average made up of about 5 common items, 6 uncommon, and 2 rare.

Increase the GP Value (and items awarded) proportionately for parties larger or smaller than four.

When awarding magical items, this table assumes that the GP Value of the item is in the middle of its range, or:

Common: 75 gp
Uncommon: 300 gp
Rare: 2,750 gp
Very Rare: 27,500 gp
Legendary: 75,000 gp

For example, if you award a Rare item, remove 2,750 gp from the budget for that tier.

Mathematical Figuring

Hoard Wealth

Page 133 of the DMG suggests that a typical party has seven hoards at Tier 1, eighteen at Tier 2, twelve at Tier 3, and eight at Tier 4.

The average of the cash treasure (including gems and art) on these treasure tables are as follows:

	Hoard gp value
CR 0-4	375.70
CR 5-10	4,544.30
CR 11-16	36,212.50
CR 17+	336,025.00

Thus, the number of hoards expected per tier indicate that the total average value is:

	Hoard Value
1-4	2,630
5-10	81,797
11-16	434,550
17+	2,688,200

Individual Encounters

The averages of the individual cash awards on page 136 of the DMG break down as follows:

	Individual gp value
CR 0-4	4.97
CR 5-10	92.50
CR 11-16	946.75
CR 17+	8,470.00

Assuming this is awarded as the “pocket change” for a medium encounter, the following are the expected total number of encounters if you only had medium encounters of the correct level:

Level	Encounters	GP/Encounter	Total GP
1	6	5	30
2	6	5	30
3	12	5	60
4	12	5	60
5	17	93	1,581
6	15	93	1,395
7	15	93	1,395
8	16	93	1,488
9	14	93	1,302
10	18	93	1,674
11	9	947	8,523
12	10	947	9,470
13	9	947	8,523
14	10	947	9,470
15	11	947	10,417
16	10	947	9,470
17	10	8470	84,700
18	10	8470	84,700
19	10	8470	84,700

Thus, for the following tiers, this is the total GP accumulated from individual encounters:

180
8,835
55,873
254,100

Magic Items

The hoard tables also include rolls on magic item tables. Averaging the chances for each table, each tier has the following average number of rolls per table:

	Mix of Magic Items
1-4	A x 6, B x 3, C x 2, F x 2
5-10	A x 10, B x 9, C x 5, D x 1, F x 6, G x 2
11-16	A x 4, B x 6, C x 9, D x 5, E x 1, F x 1, G x 2, H x 3, I x 1
17+	C x 4, D x 9, E x 6, G x 1, H x 2, I x 4

The rarity of items on each table breaks down as follows:

	C	U	R	VR	L	Value
A	90	10				98
B		100				300
C		4	96			2,652
D			1	99		27,253
E				50	50	51,250
F		100				300
G		2	98			2,701
H		2	6	92		25,471
I			4	12	84	66,410

Taking the average value of items at each rarity (as discussed above), you can give an approximate value to each table, on the right of above table.

Finally, combining that average value with the number of rolls for each table per tier, you get the following total values for magic items:

	Magic
1-4	7,393
5-10	51,402
11-16	362,110
17+	882,677

D&D 5e Warlock Patron: The King of Dreams

August 15, 2022

samhaine Game Design 5e, 5e Character Options, D&D, Warlock Comments Off on D&D 5e Warlock Patron: The King of Dreams

On some worlds, an entity deep within the ethereal or feywild gains oversight of the concepts of dreams and nightmares. When such a being is in play, sleeping creatures are, in a real sense, casting their minds into the realm of the King of Dreams. In such places, dreams and nightmares might become coherent, thinking entities in their own right, and gain enough power to threaten the waking world.

Far from omniscient or omnipotent, the King of Dreams often must rely upon servants to attempt to police the vast realm of dreams and the recalcitrant denizens therein. While tending to favor relying on other dreams and nightmares forged by their own hand, sometimes they will speak to a gifted dreamer and offer powers in exchange for service in maintaining the dream realm.

Warlocks of the King of Dreams are often tasked with hunting down rogue dreams and nightmares. These may take the form of fey or aberrations when they escape to the waking world, or may simply hide in the recurring dreams of certain mortals for a Sleepwalker to find. The warlocks may also be sent on more whimsical quests: some religious philosophers struggle to cleanly explain the difference between the King of Dreams and any other Archfey.

Pacts

Blade: Pact weapons of the King of Dreams seem altogether too fanciful to be real; the idea of the weapon, but not the reality. They tend to be overly large and have adornments that no waking smith would include. And yet, they strike as effectively as any mundane weapon.
Chain: Devotees of the King of Dreams often have a raven tasked to their aid, a protector and a spy for their patron. It has the statistics of the Psychopomp, though instead of being able to transport incorporeal undead, it can transport dream and nightmare fey and aberrations.
Tome: A classic dream journal, a dream-pact warlock’s book of shadows is often fanciful, with multicolored ribbon bookmarks, an intricate cover, and beautiful images that spontaneously accompany the spells inscribed within.
Blood: Blood-pact warlocks of the King of Dreams are generally descended from those that procreated while stuck in a coma, deeply linked to the realm of dreams while bringing a child into the world.

Features

Warlock Level	Feature
1st	Expanded Spell List, Lucidity
6th	Sleepwalker
10th	Sandman
14th	Dreamworld

Expanded Spell List

The King of Dreams lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you.

Spell Level	Spells
1st	silent image, sleep
2nd	calm emotions, phantasmal force
3rd	catnap (xge), phantom steed
4th	confusion, phantasmal killer
5th	modify memory, seeming

Lucidity

At 1st level, magic can’t put you to sleep unless you choose to let it affect you. Additionally, when sleeping (naturally or through voluntary acceptance of magical sleep), you retain a rudimentary awareness of the world around you. You do not have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks made while sleeping, and may wake and act immediately on your initiative when danger occurs while you are sleeping. You may, similarly, choose to wake immediately if subjected to danger that affects you in your dreams. These abilities do not apply when your patron puts you to sleep.

If you are normally incapable of sleep you may choose to sleep and dream. If you would normally rest fewer hours (e.g., four hours for trance), you only need to sleep this long to complete a long rest.

You have advantage on saving throws against illusion and enchantment spells, and on ability checks to recognize an illusion. You may use your action to grant a target you can touch a new saving throw to end an illusion or enchantment spell. At the DM’s discretion, these abilities also apply to effects that are similar to illusion or enchantment spells, but not technically spells.

You have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) rolls against creatures that dream.

Sleepwalker

Starting at 6th level, you gain the ability to walk through dreams. While sleeping, you may enter the dreams of any other sleeping creature within ten feet per point of proficiency bonus. The DM can describe the creature’s dreams to greater or lesser extent. You may encounter creatures of the dream realm within these visions, interacting with them as if you were in a waking encounter with them and the dreamer. Regardless of the outcome, you gain advantage on Charisma checks against the dreamer for 12 hours after they wake, due to your insight into their mind.

You may also use this ability to visit the realm of your patron while you sleep, and converse with them. At your patron’s whim, you may be led to other dreams or dream realms, and interact with them as if you were in a waking encounter.

Additionally, you gain resistance to Psychic damage.

Sandman

Starting at 10th level, you gain the ability to send other creatures directly to sleep, regardless of hit points. As a bonus action when you hit a target you can see with a weapon attack or spell (or the target fails a save against one of your spells), you may force the target to make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or fall asleep as if affected by the sleep spell. Undead and creatures immune to charm have advantage on this saving throw. If you affected multiple targets with the triggering attack or spell, you must choose one creature affected to be subject to this effect. You may use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Additionally, you add the dream spell to your spell list (and may choose another spell if you had already learned this spell).

Dreamworld

You gain conjure fey (6th), mirage arcane (7th), demiplane (8th), and weird (9th) as additional uses of your Mystic Arcanum for the listed level (you may cast the spell instead of the spell you have chosen at that level).

After you take damage, you may use your reaction to enter the Ethereal plane, making it more difficult to affect you with subsequent attacks. You return to your original plane at the start of your turn.

Invocations

Warlocks of the King of Dreams count as warlocks of the Archfey to qualify for invocations.

Dream Vortex

Prerequisite: King of Dreams patron, 5th level warlock, Pact of the Blood feature

You add summon fey (tce) as a known warlock spell (and may choose another spell if you had already learned this spell).

When you cast summon fey or conjure fey, the fey spirit takes the form of a dream or nightmare of a creature within 60 feet of you when you cast the spell; that target has disadvantage on saving throws against the summoned creature’s abilities, and the summoned creature has advantage on attack rolls against that target.

Reconceptualizing D&D 5e as Supers

July 25, 2022

samhaine Game Design 5e, D&D, superheroes Comments Off on Reconceptualizing D&D 5e as Supers

I’ve been thinking about this since watching Unsleeping City (which is more modern occult than supers, but a lot of the concepts carry over). The idea is basically to just use D&D 5e with as little conversion as possible to run a modern-day supers game. D&D characters are already fairly superheroic, especially at high level.

My initial inclination was to do a ton of work with custom classes and abilities to fully turn it into a supers game, but, honestly, I think you can get most of the way there changing very little. You just have to reimagine a lot of the mechanics from medieval fantasy to modern pulp. And, this way, it’s probably a lot easier of a sell to your players who are familiar with D&D.

Note that this isn’t really meant to model existing supers franchises, though the examples indicate that it can get closer than you’d think. You probably can’t use it to model any given hero’s powers closely enough to replicate them as a PC (though you can get a lot closer as the DM making an arbitrary NPC stat block).

Ability Scores

10 is the true human level of basic competence. Most individuals have all of their scores at 10 or lower.
12 is well above average. Many people that excel at their careers and pursuits have no scores higher than a 12.
14 is exceptional competence. Few people have a 14, and extremely few have more than one ability score at a 14 or higher. Assume that IQ/10 basically equals Intelligence, so Int 14 is a genius IQ, and other scores are similar outliers.
16 is the practical maximum for most humans. Paragons of various disciplines might have a 16. These are olympic athletes (Str, Dex, or Con), top-of-field geniuses (Int or Wis), or enduring global celebrities (Cha).
18 is the technical maximum for true outliers. The strongest unaugmented powerlifter in the world has an 18 strength. Stephen Hawking likely had an 18 intelligence.
20 is beyond human. Scores this high and above are only available to those that are augmented.

Player characters generate their ability scores normally for D&D, just use these as guidelines for how omnicompetent they are compared to baseline humans. And when creating unaugmented human NPCs, try to keep their ability scores within this frame.

It is up to the DM to decide whether to create a dramatic ramp on the lifting chart for strength to treat 20 as much more superhuman than normal. At the very least, you should allow more dramatic lifting stunts than you otherwise would, even if the practical carrying capacity isn’t increased that much from the normal chart (it’s not like supers tend to carry a ton of gear like fantasy characters anyway). At the very least, as noted in the Equipment and Improvised Weapons section, I think Str 18 can probably throw a motorcycle and Str 20 can hit an enemy with a car (though they might not be able to carry them around indefinitely).

Races

In general, most players should use the Custom Lineage rules (from Tasha’s), or just play Variant Humans. If you want some minor superpowers that don’t make sense with your class, work with the DM to make a custom race that seems balanced.

For example, rather than build Superman as a high-level Eldritch Knight to get flight, heat vision, and cold breath, Kryptonians may simply be built as a race with a fly speed, the fire bolt cantrip, and a 1/day burning hands (which does cold instead of fire). See Classes and Spells, below.

Equipment and Improvised Weapons

The armor from your starting equipment and either one weapon or one weapon and shield from this package become “phantom gear.” Unless you are suffering some kind of power suppression, you are always considered to be wielding them. Unless it makes sense for your power set, these don’t actually manifest as spectral arms and armor, but simply represent your basic enhanced toughess (armor), punching ability (melee weapon), or reusable energy blast (ranged weapon). Feats and abilities affect the phantom weapon as they would a normal weapon of the type (e.g., great weapon master works if you’re wielding a phantom greatsword).

For example, a fighter with the basic gear might have AC 18 and a 1d8 punch (as if using a longsword and shield) or AC 16 and a 2d6 punch (as if using a greatsword).

Phantom gear may improve at story moments where your powers are enhanced (at roughly the same schedule the DM would dole out better gear in a regular campaign). For example, the fighter’s AC may improve by +2 when they go from phantom chain to phantom plate in some event that increases their durability.

Since you can only choose one weapon, you will need to use improvised weapons for whichever of melee or ranged your phantom weapon doesn’t cover. In general, at Str up to 14, you can lift things that count as d6 damage weapons (and might have finesse), at Str 16 you can lift 2d6 weapons (objects up to a couple hundred pounds), at Str 18 you can lift 3d6 weapons (objects up to half a ton), and at Str 20 you can lift 4d6 weapons (objects up to a ton or more). It’s up to the DM whether cars to throw at people are readily available and/or reusable, so even high-strength characters may be limited to lesser improvised weapons depending on the environment. And picking up such a weapon uses up your bonus action in most cases (possibly also your move to get to it). Finally, improvised weapons don’t count for feats and abilities that affect specific weapons.

Tech-based characters (or your modern fantasy characters that actually wear armor and wield swords) may choose to forego phantom equipment, and represent their capabilities with physical gear. In this case, they should probably treat all their equipment as +1 enhancement higher than it would otherwise be, as a bonus for being able to disarm them without power suppression.

In general, replace physical weapons with their closest modern equivalent. This mostly means that guns just swap in for bows without any practical changes. Yes, a modern firearm should be way more deadly than a shortbow in a true simulation, but for pulp games, it doesn’t really matter that much.

Classes and Spells

Think of classes as your main powerset, and do your best to make the concept for your powers fit. A speedster might be a barbarian or monk (or rogue that just uses cunning action to dash). Most strength-based characters represent various types of brick, dexterity-based characters are your ninjas and acrobats, and casters are blasters.

If the character concept really doesn’t support a particular class ability, the DM should allow the player to swap to something equivalently powerful that makes more sense. But try to do this as little as possible, since the whole draw of this is to avoid having to make a ton of houseruled classes.

While prepared casters usually represent your true Dr. Strange types, and warlocks may be witches, spontaneous casters and most half-casters use spells to represent various energy projection powers and miscellaneous utility powers. At minimum, allow spells that represent powers to switch to the character’s primary energy type (e.g., for a sorcerer that’s a fire blaster, all of their damage spells should be switched to do fire damage). Most “spells” also don’t really have components, though you can still impose a monetary cost on the ones with expensive material components as part of their balance. In general, try to limit your character to spells that make sense, and the DM should be generous in allowing you to describe the effects of a spell in a way that makes more sense for your concept (e.g., the charm and suggestion spells as mind-control or super-Charisma).

For some characters, the wide raft of spells don’t make a lot of sense, because they’re really just trying to pick up a particular power (e.g., flight). As noted above, this might work better as a custom race. But if you really just want to have one trick, the DM can experiment with giving you more spell slots but fewer known spells (though try this gradually and be careful of balance; there are probably certain spells that could make this too good).

Also think heavily about spells per day as having some level of narrative implication. Maybe your Cypher-esque omniglot can’t technically run tongues all day for 100% linguistic comprehension as you conceived, but should be able to get it running most of the time when it matters. If there are still aliens to interpret for after running out of spell slots, maybe you just have a stress headache or need to do something else for a while.

Skills, Tools, and Languages

Not all of the standard skills make sense for a modern supers campaign. However, standard sheets don’t make it easy to remove and add skills, so I’ve endeavored to make the transfer below as simple as possible. You may just have to make a note somewhere to remember that Arcana is actually Science.

Science replaces Arcana, and represents most hard sciences (biology is still Medicine and Nature).
Academics replaces History, expanding it to a broad knowledge of liberal arts education topics.
Nature remains the same, but takes on more of Survival’s ability to forage in the wilderness.
Occult replaces Religion, and covers Religion, Arcana, and other esoteric, mystical concepts.
Streetwise replaces Survival, and focuses more on navigation and tracking in an urban environment (allowing Nature to carry more of the rare out-of-city adventure tropes).

Computers are a new tool proficiency. You may also want to create separate tool proficiencies for things like Electronics. Driving a car is Land Vehicles. You might also add Air Vehicles for planes. PCs should have a broad ability to swap out existing tool proficiencies for the modern technology ones.

Common is replaced by the dominant language of the country in which you’re setting your game. Allow players to swap other fantasy languages for Earth languages. If you want to play a true polyglot, consider getting the tongues spell, as mentioned above, rather than chasing down adding every possible language to your sheet.

Knockback

This is an optional rule to have more cinematic fights like in the comics.

Whenever you take damage from a kinetic or explosive source that could presumably send you flying, you may reduce the damage to half and move away a number of feet equal to the damage ultimately taken (e.g., if you take 20 damage and halve it for knockback, you suffer 10 damage and fly back 10 feet). This is a free action that stacks with reactions such as Uncanny Dodge; it’s fair for characters in supers fights to be twice as durable if they’re willing to get smashed through walls.

If this knocks you off a ledge, you suffer falling damage normally. If you would hit a wall, you go through the wall if the damage you took would also be enough to break it. This does not generally do additional damage to you, but is just cinematic.

If the damage you took is higher than your Dexterity score, you fall prone at the end of the knockback. If it is equal or lower, you can keep your feet (unless you are also knocked off a ledge).

Enemies

In general, it’s pretty easy to convert standard monsters to supers threats. Swapping their type to Construct for robots or Monstrosity for science mutants goes a long way. Tweak resistances and immunities to make sense, and change how you describe the creature and you can get away with reusing stats.

For human threats, keep the rules about ability scores in mind, if only for verisimilitude. In general, unaugmented humans should probably be limited to CR 1 or less. Anything higher, and you’re looking at standard-issue power armor and laser weapons, or explaining why they have low-level powers.

In general, you have the same problem as in regular D&D justifying why high-CR intelligent NPCs are working as mooks for an even bigger villain rather than setting up their own enterprise in another town where they’re less likely to get punched.

DMing 101: Your First One-Shot

July 18, 2022

samhaine Setting Design 5e, D&D, GMing Comments Off on DMing 101: Your First One-Shot

A friend was telling me her teenager recently ran her first D&D one-shot for friends, and stressed herself out mightily trying to figure out what to prep. That got me thinking about my advice for an introductory session of D&D, particularly for others that have never really played before that you’re trying to convince that the hobby is an entertaining one.

Best Practice: Don’t beat yourself up. You are your own worst critic. The session didn’t go as badly as you think it did, and, even if it did, you’ll get a chance to try again. People willing to DM are few, so just being willing to try gives you an audience. It’s a skill that takes a long time to get good at, but any DM is better than no DM. Give yourself room to fail, and use those failures to improve. You’ll get better, and as long as you’re honest about improving, everyone is going to be pulling for you to do so.

Character Generation

If this is a true one-shot, I’d advise you to pregenerate characters. And I’d advise starting them at third level for D&D 5e. The pregeneration allows you to skip a lot of confusion at the table, particularly if you have players that are new. Starting at third level makes the PCs a lot tougher (so you don’t accidentally kill them with a few lucky monster rolls) and gives them access to more of their fun class abilities (particularly, that’s the level where everyone has gotten access to their subclass features).

When pregenerating, definitely get input from everyone as to what they want to play. Some people might be very specific (and veteran players might want to make the character themselves, and feel free to let them within the same guidelines as everyone else). Some might be very vague, and you’ll have to prompt them with suggestions for races, classes, and backgrounds they might find fun. The goal here is to get enough buy-in that the players feel they have ownership of the characters without forcing those with no experience to go through character generation.

If this is a “one-shot” only in the sense that you definitely want to run a whole campaign with these same characters, and you’re just trying to get buy-in, then you’re more limited. In this case, you’ll probably want to start at first level (so everyone feels like the levels past that are “earned”). And you’ll likely want to sit people down to make their characters themselves (with a lot of input from you for those that haven’t played before). Ideally, get everyone together for a Session 0 (character generation and planning session) to have time to work through the process and bounce character ideas off of each other. This process always takes more time than you’ve budgeted, so you don’t want to try to do it and then run a whole adventure in the same time block.

Don’t Meet in a Tavern

It’s a sacred D&D trope and it usually sucks. I may be an outlier on this advice, but I think this trope should die in a fire. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a D&D game where we met in a tavern that didn’t take forever to get going and lead to character problems for many sessions on. The core problem is just, why would you trust your life to a handful of strangers you just met at a bar? It’s hard to bend your roleplaying around the idea that you’re adventuring with these people, but your character doesn’t trust or even like most of them.

My advice is to have the PCs all be companions before the game starts. There are a number of ways to do this:

Big City Adventurers: The PCs are from an adventuring guild in the big city (or some equivalent that makes sense for your world, like deputies of some adventuring government agency). They already know each other from the guildhall, and chose to band together to go out looking for problems to solve. This is a great option if you foresee your campaign going back to the big city if it continues.
Local Heroes: The PCs are the few classed adventurers in this town. For whatever reason, they’re not actually on the sheriff’s payroll, but everyone knows that they’re the plucky heroes the town can call on when something weird happens. They’ve known each other for years, and are probably all friends that hang out (depending on ages). This is a great option if you foresee the campaign being focused on this region of the world, using this town as a home base.
Far-Flung Connections: The PCs are all relatives or all have the same patron. While they have been adventuring in other places, they’ve probably met one another at least in passing and have their mutual contacts to say they’re trustworthy. Their relative/patron in the town has called them in for this mission (or maybe their patron has recently died and they’re all here investigating the suspicious circumstances). The trick with this one is to make it clear that the patron/relative is/was really nice, so they’ll all feel good about adventuring together under the NPC’s banner.
Already Met in a Tavern: Particularly if you’re starting at higher level, you can say that the PCs have already had a meet cute, gone on an adventurer or two, and gotten over any initial distrust they might have had. Have the players give you some vague ideas for the adventure where they met, and workshop it into something that makes sense for your campaign world until everyone’s happy with the summary of their “first adventure together.” This can give you an immediate hook for the next one-shot (“Remember that town you saved from zombies in your first adventure? Now they have a new problem and are calling you back…”).

Best Practice: Don’t have high-level NPCs around unless it’s very clear why they can’t help. Particularly in the patron scenario, the players are going to be like, “If they’re so interested in this, why don’t they come along and help?” This is a special problem with the classic high-level wizard distributing quests: in the time they waited around for adventurers to provide the quest to, they could have just popped over and handled the crisis. It’s easier if the patron is wealthy, but low-level (e.g., the mayor or a local landowner), so needs the combat skills the PCs possess.

Corollary: Don’t have a bunch of high-level guards in town. If the players are having to handle all of the town’s serious problems themselves, but then have a tough fight if they ever run afoul of the guards, they’re going to immediately want to know why the guards haven’t been handling the town’s weird problems, if they’re so competent. This means that the PCs are going to get away with crimes. I’ll discuss that a little bit down below.

The Town Scene

At this point, you know why the players are adventuring together and why they’re in this town looking for adventure. You could skip straight to the adventure. But you should run a town scene first.

The difference between tabletop RPGs and video games is the unscripted freedom to interact with whatever and whoever you want. You’re going to build some of that into the first dungeon as well, but it’s really apparent in town. The players can interact with whatever they want. They can talk to whoever they want. They can say and do whatever inane things they want, and the NPCs will respond.

Your first-time players in particular are going to want to pick a fight. They’re going to want to steal stuff. They’re going to push things in the environment just to see that they fall over. Some of this is that they’re seeing how much freedom they have. Some of it is that we don’t really get to act out in our lives in the real world, and D&D provides a no-consequence way to get it our of our systems.

You obviously don’t want your players to murder the town guard, scoop up all the money, and run off into the sunset, dungeon unplumbed. If nothing else, it’s not actually as much fun as it seems, even for the players doing it. But you don’t want to clamp down on bad behavior like an angry assistant principal either. What do you do?

Best Practice: Let the players seem to barely get away with bad behavior. If they try to steal something, don’t tell them the DC. If they rolled well, act like bystanders almost spotted them and might if they try again. If they rolled poorly, play the failure as them giving up on the attempt because there are too many eyes on them (rather than obviously stealing in the open and leading to a big arrest scene). If they start a fight, have the other side give up quickly, with bystanders muttering about “heroes” that pick fights rather than helping the town. What you want is for the players to get that they’re allowed to act out, but they should be getting on to the crisis out of town that they all came here for. What you don’t want is the session to devolve into a brawl with the town guards trying to arrest the PCs (especially since you’ve set the town guard up as not very competent, which is why they need the PCs in the first place).

Assuming things don’t devolve instantly into a crime spree, what you’re trying to get out of the town scene is some freeform roleplay. You’re getting the players used to speaking in character and treating the world as a real thing. You’re dropping some campaign lore, if you’ve developed it. You’re getting the players to make decisions in character, even if they’re minor ones. You’re showing off that D&D is more than just killing goblins in a dungeon.

Ask the players what they’re up to in town before meeting up with their contact for the quest briefing. Try to split them up, if you feel comfortable running separate scenes for different PCs (it helps to have a town map, so you can move their minis around it to make it obvious who can interject into which conversations; “You’re over at the blacksmith, you aren’t part of the conversation with the barkeep.”). If they don’t have anything in particular they want to do, suggest that they can go try to buy gear that didn’t come with their default equipment packages, which should send them to roleplay with a shopkeep.

Best Practice: Don’t overprep, particularly for NPCs. You don’t actually need to have every significant NPC in town fully described and statted. Lean into tropes and stereotypes. The blacksmith is a gruff dwarf. The barkeep is loud and large. Do a funny voice, if you feel up to it. If they for some reason need to roll against the NPC, pull a low-level stat block from the back of the Monster Manual. Or just give the NPC a +0 through a +3, depending on how good it seems like they should be at the skill. If the players revisit the NPC, you can develop them further then. The biggest trick to DMing is that work your players don’t see is wasted: you’re way better off spending your prep cycles on NPCs, locations, and plots the players have already demonstrated they’re interested in.

You might want to throw some foils in. Make most of the NPCs supportive and nice (after all, these are heroes here solving their problems), but throw in one or two that don’t like them. This gives them someone to prove wrong, and get an apology from later. It’s probably best that this is someone they won’t immediately want to throw down with for the insult (someone connected, like the mayor’s kid, or an actual child, rather than a town tough).

Best Practice: It’s easy to get players to hate NPCs. It sometimes seems that your players are primed to hate any NPC that acts like they have a life and opinion of their own that doesn’t revolve around the PCs getting their own way. After all, they’re the protagonists. You don’t have to work very hard to get players to decide an NPCs is their enemy. It’s honestly a lot harder to get players to like NPCs without having them be total pushovers to whatever the PCs are selling. This is trending into advanced GMing tips, so just be aware of it. NPCs you thought your characters would love, they’ll hate because they disagreed at the wrong time. NPCs you thought they’d hate or at least not care about will be adopted as the team mascot. You just have to roll with it.

Eventually, you’re going to corral them into the actual quest hook. If they’re locals, word can just come through during their normal day that the mayor/sheriff/patron needs to talk to them. If they came here looking for adventure, you can just remind them that their meeting with their contact starts soon.

If you’re being fancy, you can make the adventure come to them. Someone screams that their kid has been carried off by goblins. Skeletons are suddenly shambling into town, coming from the old crypt. The old diabolist everyone thought was long-dead shouts down from the local hill that they’ll all rue the day they exiled him (rue!) before running back to his sanctum. You know, action stuff.

Either way, you’re basically trying to provide two things:

Directions to the dungeon
A little bit of context about what they’re going to fight there so they can make limited preparations

This is a first-time one-shot. You’re not trying to be tricky this time. You want a clear call to action and a dungeon to be called to. Save the more complicated scenarios for when everyone is more seasoned.

Dungeon Crawling

Most of what I’d want to say about how to build an early dungeon, Matt Colville has already covered in great detail. You basically want:

A short enough dungeon that they’ll get through it in your available time
More than one type of encounter: different kinds of fights, traps, chances for social interaction, etc.
Some opportunities to make real choices
A satisfying final room where the players feel like they won a victory

If you’re trying to sell people on an extended campaign in a world of your devising, this is a great place to build in subtle connections to your lore. You’re not trying to hit them over the head with it, but interesting decorations in your room or character descriptions can go a long way. Text props unrelated to the current problem can hint at issues going on elsewhere. Maybe the little big bad they defeat in the dungeon was clearly working for—or at least incited by—some greater and more mysterious force.

Best Practice: Leave room in your encounters for clever solutions or roleplaying. Not every room has to be a combat. The players might scare off the bad guys. They might convince them to help. In particular, it’s useful to have an optional room that contains an NPC that isn’t directly in league with the main enemies, that the players can fight or befriend. It could be a mistreated guardian. It could be a creature the main enemies are afraid of but leave alone as long as it stays in its area. It could be a spirit the PCs might convince to fight with them or even possess one of their weapons to turn it into a temporary magic item. The players are going to remember the time they did something clever and unexpected to change an encounter for much longer than the time they won a combat.

And that’s it. The PCs run the dungeon. They return to town triumphant. NPCs that told them they wouldn’t do it apologize. NPCs that believed in them all along give a hearty thanks and a modest quest reward.

All that’s left is to ask the players whether they had a good time and might want to try it again.

D&D 5e: Additional Chain Pact Warlock Options

July 4, 2022

samhaine Game Design 5e, 5e Character Options, D&D, Warlock 1 Comment

It’s weird that only Fiendlocks get Pact of the Chain familiar options that are decent, right? Imp and Quasit are significantly better familiar options than Sprite, and while Pseudodragon at least gets Magic Resistance, it’s only CR 1/4 vs. the CR 1 of the fiendish options. This post offers some options for comparable CR 1 familiars that better fit some of the other patrons, and also a new invocation.

I feel like you should offer the youngest version of the Faerie Dragon as a familiar for Archfey warlocks, so that creates a better option than Sprite for them. Argonine is meant for Great Old One, Lantern Archon is meant for Celestial, and Psychopomp is meant for Hexblade (does anyone make a Hexblade patron warlock that isn’t a bladelock?). For Fathomless and Genie, I feel like a reskin of the Imp or Quasit as a stronger Mephit is probably fine: just make it an elemental and reskin the resistances and powers for the appropriate element.

New Invocation: Empowering Chains

Prerequisite: 5th level, Pact of the Chain feature

Your investment in your familiar improves its capabilities. Whenever you summon your familiar using the find familiar spell, it gains the following benefits:

The to hit for its attacks, its trained skills, and any saving throws DCs for its actions increase by +1 for every point your proficiency bonus is higher than 2 (essentially replacing its proficiency bonus with your own).
Its AC increases by half your proficiency bonus.
It gains additional HP equal to twice your Warlock level.
It gains the Multiattack action, allowing it to make two attacks with its main attack.
It gains the Evasion ability, as per the Rogue feature of the same name.

New Monsters

Argonine

A strange “cat” from beyond the known planes, the Argonine is a shadowy mass of eyes and sharp tentacles that can disguise itself as a mortal feline to those that don’t look too closely.

Argonine
Tiny aberration, unaligned

Armor Class 13
Hit Points 10 (3d4 + 3)
Speed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
6 (-2)	17 (+3)	13 (+1)	7 (-2)	12 (+1)	12 (+1)

Skills Acrobatics +5, Insight +5, Perception +5, Stealth +5
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, necrotic
Damage Immunities psychic
Condition Immunities charmed, grappled
Senses blindsight 60 ft., truesight 20 ft. passive Perception 11
Languages Deep Speech
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Death Sense. The argonine can sense the exact location of any humanoid or beast within 120 feet with current hit points less than half its maximum hit points.

False Appearance. Unless it is using its Claw Barrage ability, the argonine is indistiguishable from a normal housecat to those without truesight, blindsense, or a link to a Great Old One.

Keen Senses. The argonine has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight or smell.

Light Sensitivity. While in sunlight or equivalent bright light, the argonine has disadvantage on attack rolls. The argonine has disadvantage on saving throws against effects that would cause the blinded condition.

Magic Resistance. The argonine has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Actions

Claw Barrage. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., all creatures within reach. Hit: 5 (1d4+3) slashing damage.

Shadowmeld. The argonine magically turns invisible until it attacks or until its concentration ends (as if concentrating on a spell). Any items carried by the argonine become invisible with it. It may only use this power when in dim light or darkness, and it becomes visible again if it enters an area of normal or bright light.

Lantern Archon

The least of the celestial host, lantern archons are little more than ephemeral balls of light, assigned to lead mortals on the path of virtue by giving good advice and faint aid.

Lantern Archon
Small celestial, neutral good

Armor Class 17
Hit Points 11 (2d6 + 4)
Speed fly 60 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
1 (-5)	18 (+4)	14 (+2)	6 (-2)	12 (+1)	12 (+1)

Skills Perception +3, Religion +0
Damage Resistances radiant; bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, prone, restrained
Senses darkvision 120 ft. passive Perception 13
Languages all, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Innate Spellcasting. The lantern archon’s spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 11). The lantern archon can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
At will: light, detect evil and good
1/day: aid

Magic Resistance. The lantern archon has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Actions

Healing Touch (1/Day). The lantern archon touches another creature. The target magically regains 9 (2d8) hit points and is freed from any curse, disease, poison, blindness, or deafness.

Light Ray. Ranged Spell Attack: +6 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4+4) radiant damage.

Psychopomp

Easy to mistake for a particularly large and clever raven, psychopomps are minions of the Raven Queen that can be sent to aid her followers or to force the dead to move on.

Psychopomp
Tiny beast, unaligned

Armor Class 14
Hit Points 10 (3d4 + 3)
Speed 10 ft., fly 60 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
2 (-4)	18 (+4)	12 (+1)	6 (-2)	12 (+1)	14 (+2)

Skills Perception +3, Stealth +6
Damage Resistances necrotic, psychic; bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons
Condition Immunities frightened, life drained
Senses darkvision 60 ft. passive Perception 13
Languages all (can’t speak except Raven Speech and Mimicry)
Challenge 1 (200 XP)

Death Sense. The psychopomp can sense the exact location of any humanoid or beast within 120 feet with current hit points less than half its maximum hit points.

Magic Resistance. The psychopomp has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Mimicry. The psychopomp can mimic simple sounds it has heard, such a person whispering, a baby crying, or an animal chittering. A creature that hears the sounds can tell they are imitations with a DC 10 Wisdom (Insights) check.

Raven Speech. The psychopomp can learn to croak a number of words equal to its Intelligence score.

Actions

Beak. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit:6 (1d4+4) piercing damage. This attack counts as radiant damage if it targets an Undead creature.

Blink. The psychopomp vanishes from its current plane of existence and appears in the Ethereal Plane, or, if already on the Ethereal Plane, appears in the nearest corresponding unoccupied space on the Material Plane (or the plane adjacent to the Ethereal that it most recently exited from). The psychopomp cannot carry any other living creatures or items with it, but may carry incorporeal undead or other souls. For unwilling incorporeal undead, the psychopomp must be adjacent before using this action, and the undead target receives a Charisma saving throw (DC 12) to avoid being brought along.

Introduction: What is a Mystery?

Components

Mystery Types

Rolling Up a Mystery

Type

Hooks

Suspects

Witnesses

Locations

Building Out Your Mystery

Clues

Complications

Revelations

Weapons

Asmodeus’ Star

Dawnblade

Drunkard’s Foil

Duelist’s Mirror

Ghartok’s Flindbars

Khopesh of Disarming

Nethys’ Chaos Hammer

Pickman’s Model

Vigil Officer’s Axe

Foci

Alaznist’s Angry Red Orb

Minderhal’s Ball Peen #7

Staff of the Parchlands

Overview

Mathematical Figuring

Hoard Wealth

Individual Encounters

Magic Items

Pacts

Features

Expanded Spell List

Lucidity

Sleepwalker

Sandman

Dreamworld

Invocations

Dream Vortex

Ability Scores

Races

Equipment and Improvised Weapons

Classes and Spells

Skills, Tools, and Languages

Knockback

Enemies

Character Generation

Don’t Meet in a Tavern

The Town Scene

Dungeon Crawling

New Invocation: Empowering Chains

New Monsters

Argonine

Lantern Archon

Psychopomp

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Personal