More NPCs

 

Additional NPCs to cause problems for players:

Henri Loojik – Mountebank, Fixer and last resort of the desperate adventurer. He exists for the moment that the players' realize he is Conman Loojik. 

The Brothers - Four brothers. Sellers of acquired goods. Each has tribal scarring across their mouths, indicating their origin is the great southern swamps. All speak in the rough husky voice of those who daily smoke the black lotus. They are the four hoarse men of the pocked lips. 

Jento - A scrawny flea ridden wizard. He wants to cast one of the great forbidden summoning spells and is attempting to turn the muddy streets of his city into a giant summoning circle. The wizard steals wagons and inscribes magic symbols on the flat steel tire of the wheels. The wagons leave a mystical pattern on the ground as they travel through out the city. Shadow creatures slowly start to leak through…

Rosswell and Kern - A pair of hulking brutes, who specialize in recovering valuable items for their clients. They can only be found working in the largest of cities, never in dungeons or the countryside.

While Rosswell and Kern pretend to be street hardened thieves, they are in fact two 4th level magic users. Their 100% ability to climb any wall, open any lock and never be seen, has made them very valuable to those who can afford their fees. If the players have absconded with a magical object, Rosswell and Kern may well be sent after them.

Their spells included Spider Climb, Unseen Servant, Locate Object, Knock, Invisibility and Sleep.

 

NPC Puppets

 

In a good campaign Non Player Characters must be alive. They can not be lifeless cardboard cut outs. They should have clear motivations that will colour their interactions with others.

Here are three nobles that can be dropped into a game to add flavour, be a patron or just to cause trouble for the players.

The Luwellens. Brother and sister Dmitri and Vanya. Deeply in debt and desperate. They inherited from their father a moldery estate, a herd of goats and Frederic and Franco. Two elderly but highly competent assassins.

Lord Ivan Malin - Family motto “What we have, we keep”. Conservative and cautious in nature. Not interested in taking risks to increase holdings or political power. During conflicts, he always sides with those most likely to win. Is often seen at sporting events. An excellent shot.

Count Erutl Glibnick - Member of the one of the decaying houses. Functionally illiterate. Likes to collect small poisonous creatures. Has a lip reading servant Oblic, that keeps him alive in court.

Minecraft

Many wizards want to Minecraft. They want the tools to build simple magical constructs to solve problems. Most spells in basic D&D are very specific. Spells are traditionally designed for one purpose only and don't allow much improvisation. Having spells that allow a wizard greater flexibility, would be helpful.

Casting Rune Level 1, Range: 0, Duration: 8 hrs (48 Turns), Effect: Variable (Holds a 1^st or 2^nd level spell)

This spell creates a magical rune that holds another spell, releasing it when triggered. A Casting Rune is a simple if/then spell. It can only detect contact/damage or movement. It is essentially a magical trip line or pressure plate. A Casting Rune requires 50 gp in components.

Three types of Casting Rune:

1. Guardian Rune – A Guardian Rune can not be moved/touched without instantly triggering. It can only be cast on inanimate objects. Used for creating alarms/traps or magical devices. Any spell effect centres on the rune. If the spell effect is a cone, then the effect is in the direction of contact. It can hold any type of spell. If a wizard uses a Guardian Rune and Phantasmal Force on an empty box, the box then appears filled with gold when opened.

2. Talisman Rune – Creates a talisman that holds the Casting Rune. Personal spell effects only. Casting Rune and Invisibility on a clay Talisman, breaking the Talisman then causes the holder to turn invisible.

3. Combat Rune. A fighter with a Casting Rune on their armour, would see the spell take affect after they were struck and took damage. Personal effect spells only. When triggered, the spell is cast before all actions in the next round. A mu casts a Combat Rune and Shield on himself. After entering a dungeon, the wizard is shot at by orcish archers. Some of the arrows hit, causing 5 damage and triggering the Shield spell. At the start of the next round, before initiative is rolled, the Shield spell takes effect.

The Casting Rune can hold just one spell of either 1^st or 2^nd level. Only one Casting Rune, created by the same wizard, can exist in a 5 ft square, without dispelling each other. Incorporeal creatures do not trigger the spell. A Rune can be deliberately visible or invisible. There is a 10% chance for a MU or 5% for thieves per level to detect an invisible Casting Rune. A Detect Magic will automatically reveal a Casting Rune. A wizard can stop his own Casting Rune from triggering, if within 30 ft.


All of these types of Casting Runes are optional, but they can increase the creative possibilities for wizards and make defensive spells more attractive.

Trading Spells

Rules Cyclopaedia pg44 “By ancient tradition—of necessity and common sense—magic-users are loathe to trade spells among themselves. “

Many RPGs say that player Magic Users are reluctant to trade spells. But why? So I started to think of some possibilities for house rules to limit spell trading.

Magic is personal and jealously guarded. A wizard would normally never teach another how he cast a particular spell, because it would weaken the effect of his own magic. Too many people on your network slows it down.

1. So similarly, teaching apprentices a spell, damages the effectiveness of that spell. All spells that are shared, now function at half power. Each shared spell has half range, duration and damage. If a master  taught an apprentice his version of Lightning Bolt, then the range would be 90ft and cause 1-3 damage per level.  Likewise, if the apprentice (or the master) had a unfortunate fatal accident, the Lightning Bolt spell would revert to a fully powered spell.

2. So in this world, players usually gain spells through research. If a player finds a scroll, the player would still have to do the research (at half cost/time) to make their own version of the spell. But even then, it actually taps power from the original source. Learning from a stolen fireball scroll written by the wizard Moe the Merciless is extra dangerous, if Moe suddenly finds his own fireball is now half powered. Otherwise, scrolls work the same as usual.

For PCs, it is combat mechanics. Trading spells increases party survivability. Tactically it is a good idea for each of the party magic users to be able to cast fireball. Swapping spells between characters is the easiest way to achieve this. PC wizards make their gold by adventuring and not dying. Not by having a monopoly on a spell. Spell casters who pool their knowledge, are more valuable to the party then those who don't.

However, Spell books in a campaign can quickly become identical. I think there is more role playing in enforcing some penalties for trading between spell casters. That may be what some of the original books were getting at. Every spell caster in the party can have magic missile. They just can't get it the easy way by trading spells with each other.

Death Magic

A party of 6 Adventures meet an evil 1^st level wizard with a sleep spell.

Chances of a Total Party Kill:

1^st level Adventurers 2d8=84.39% TPK

2^nd level Adventurers 2d6=72.23% TPK

3^rd level Adventurers 1d6=16.67% TPK

This spell is a problem. There is no saving throw against a sleep spell. A sleep spell is death magic. A wizard that knows sleep is one of the most dangerous encounters a low level party can have. D&D modules B2 "The Keep on the Borderlands", B4 "The Lost City" and B10 "Night's Dark Terror" all have Magic Users with sleep spells.

There have been attempts to limit the deadliness of the sleep spell over the years. Menzner (1983) and The Rules Cyclopedia (1991) limit sleep spells to a 40x40 ft  area. The miniature rules for D&D in Swords & Spells (1976) restricts sleep to a 10 ft diameter.

Possible solutions:

1. Impose restrictions. Reduce the area of affect. Whether it is 40x40 ft or 10 ft, limit the range. Everyone, friend or foe, within that area is affected.

2. Create a new version of sleep that allows a saving throw. Hold person and charm person spells have saving throws. Even death spell has a saving throw. Both characters and monsters would benefit from having some chance of resisting a sleep spell and not waking up dead.

Strengthening the Basic D&D Magic User.

Low level Magic Users have only a few spells. Once all the spells are cast, their contributions to the party can be very limited. Here are some options to increase Magic User proficiencies/fun in a campaign. Three are by-the-book, the last is a house rule.

By-The-Book:

1. Scroll creation at 1st level:

Holmes pg 13. “Magic users may make a scroll of a spell they already "know" (i.e. have in their magic book) at a cost of 100 gold pieces and 1 week's work for each spell of the first level, 200 gold pieces and 2 weeks for a second level spell.”

2. Move and Cast:

Gazetteer 3 pg 59. “Agility Training: This allows the magic-user to roll (d20) under his Dexterity to be able to cast spells while moving. This can only he done at a normal walking pace; riding a mount or dodging attacks imposes a severe penalty on the ability check (DM's discretion, a -1 to -10 to the Dex score. depending on circumstances). If the attempt fails, the spell is lost.”

3. Combining Spell Levels:

Gazetteer 3 pg. 59 “Spell Combination: This technique allows the student to mix his spell levels in any combination, so long as the total spell levels memorized do not exceed his capacity. For example: a level 4 magic-user normally casts two 1st level spells, and two 2nd levels (for a total of 6 spell levels).With this technique, he can choose to memorize six first level spells. Or three second levels, or any other appropriate combination.”

Casting House Rule by Finarvyn/Firebee:

Free cast-power point system. All types of spell casters are allowed to free cast. They don't need to choose spells beforehand. Magic Users/Elves are limited to the spells in their book.

Just total the spell slots you have available per level and that's your power pool. A first level spell is worth 1 point, a 2^nd level spell is worth 2 points and so on. Then any spell you cast, deducts that level from the power pool (i.e. a 3rd level spell uses 3 points). You are still limited to the maximum number of spells your character can cast. So a 4^th level MU would have 6 spell points and could cast a total of 4 spells.

To make the system a little more fun, give each player a plastic gem for every spell they can cast, and a plastic coin for every spell point. When they cast a spell, they simply give the DM a gem and the appropriate number of coins. It's a pretty easy way to keep track of spells and spell points.

The Problem with Thieves

There is a lot that really helps to Nerf the Basic D&D Thief. Thieves are as weak and fragile as Magic Users and are slow to develop any real proficiency in Thieving. A 6th Level Thief will fail the majority of skill rolls. What makes it worse, is that other classes can often have Thief-like abilities.

A 1st level Dwarf can find traps more easily than a 5th level Thief (35% vs 30%).
A 1st level Halfling can hide in a dungeon better than a 5th level Thief (32% vs 30%) or in the woods better than a 11th level thief (90% vs 85%).
A 4th Level Cleric with a Find Traps spell can discover traps more reliably than a 14th Level Thief (100% vs 99%).
A 3rd level Magic User with a Knock spell is more skilled  in opening locks than a 14th Thief (100% vs 99%).

In my experience, it is very difficult to keep a Thief alive. This often results in the Thief cowering at the back of the party, with the Magic User. When a Thief is low level, a 2-16 sword back stab damage is significant. A back stab has the potential to one shot an average opponent. It is extremely important to the party's survival that a Thief back stabs. However, as the Thief levels and is now fighting Giants, the Thief's back stab becomes not as valuable. Back stab damage does not scale in Basic D&D.

The following Thief is a modification of Kutalik's Thief which is based on the LotFP "Thief" Specialist which, in turn, is based on the AD&D (2e) Thief.

Modified Thief

The Thief uses d6 Hit Dice for hit points. When attacking while hidden by Stealth, a 1st level Thief may backstab at +4 to hit and double damage. Triple damage at 5-8 level, quadruple at levels 9-12, and quintuple at levels 13 or above. (AD&D PHB p27)

 All Thief skill rolls are made on a d6. A skill check is successful if it is at or lower than the skill roll. At each new level past first, the thief can distribute points to a skill as they choose. A skill may be not go higher than 6. The GM should decrease or increase the chance of success for easier or more difficult tasks. Skill descriptions are the same as btb with the exception of Stealth which covers both Hide in Shadows and Move Silently. At level 9, the Thief can also begin to use Magic User scrolls. (Kutlaik)

If a Thief has a skill with a rating of 6 in 6, the roll to succeed is made with two dice, and only if both dice come up 6 does the attempt fail. (LotFP p17)

Base Thief Skills

Climb Walls: 4

Pick Pockets/Slight of Hand: 1

Find/Remove Traps: 1

Find Secret Door/Hidden Object: 1

Locks: 1

Hear Noise: 2

Stealth: 1

Read Codes/Maps/Cyphers: 0

Read Magic Scrolls (at Level 9): 3
Disguise: 0 (General. Not a specific person.)

Exp	Level	Hit Dice (1d6)	Bonus Skill Levels
0	1	1	0
1250	2	2	2
2500	3	3	2
5000	4	4	2
10000	5	5	2
20000	6	6	2
40000	7	7	2
80000	8	8	2
160000	9	9	2
280000	10	10	2
400000	11	+1 hp	1
520000	12	+2 hp	1
640000	13	+3 hp	1
760000	14	+4 hp	1
880000	15	+5 hp	1
1000000	16	+6 hp	1
1120000	17	+7 hp	1
1240000	18	+8 hp	1
1360000	19	+9 hp	1
1480000	20	+10 hp	1