An idea that 4E implements well that I'm totally stealing is the idea of "quickie levelling" for NPCs and critters. Say, for instance, you really, really need a 9th level bounty hunter, but the only stat block you have handy is for a 7th level one? Slap a couple of quickie levels on that bad boy and run with it!

Or, alternatively and perhaps even more common, what do you do when really, really need a 5th level bounty hunter, but the only block, as before is for 7th level? Slap a couple of negative quickie levels on that bad boy and run with it!

Each level adjustment impacts BAB, Damage, Defenses (Ref, Fort, Will), Hit Points, and Skill Checks only. The base character's ability scores, feats, talents, and trained skills do not change, nor are any of those figured into the changes. (For instance, a +2 level adjustment gives a flat +10 hit points, which is not modified by the creature's Con score.) If you wish, you can further adjust the stats by whether or not the NPC is a dedicated fighter or a complete noncombatant.

Level/CL	BAB	Damage	Defenses	Hit Points	Skill Checks
±4	±3	±2	±4	±20	±2
±3	±2	±1	±3	±15	±1
±2	±1	±1	±2	±10	±1
±1	±0	±0	±1	±5	±0
Noncombatant	-1*	+0	+0	-5**	+0
Combat Spec.	+1	+0	+1	+5	+0

*At +1 level, this should be +0 rather than -1.
**This does not stack with other negative HP values.

These levels, as indicated, are "quickies," designed to give you a working stat block that's "close enough" for a workable encounter. Note that they only go +/-4 levels in either direction: this is intentional, because once you start getting that far off from the basic stat block, you end up with NPCs that have either a major surplus or shortage of feats and talents for the amount of challenge they're intended to provide. When you get to that disparate a level, you should either look for another base stat block, or do it "the long way" by hand.

If desired, it probably won't be an "encounter breaker" if you add a feat or a talent of your choice at +2 and +4. However, it's probably not worth taking away any feats or talents at -2 and -4 — most NPCs and/or creatures won't get to use all of their abilities in any single encounter anyway, so it's not worth the time to figure out which one(s) to strip.

Comments welcome and desired. Whattya think, sirs?

-The Gneech

...is that you don't talk about the adventure before you run it!

Which is tough because ... frankly ... this adventure idea is coming out pretty darn awesome. At least I think so. Whether or not my players will think so is harder to say, but I'm hoping they'll enjoy it. It's got a wonderfully old-school sword and sorcery feel (Say it with me: "Howard, Leiber, Lovecraft, dread! Kill the monstahs, make 'em dead!") but has been nothing but easy to whip together. And with the more robust multiclassing and additional options provided by the online tools, putting together a setting that didn't suck has actually been fairly easy, as well.

( Yes, you guessed it, more gaming blather! )

-The Gneech

[1] Let me clarify that a bit — if the Planescape-ey stuff is in there from the get-go, I can accept it and go. It's not my favorite type of fantasy, but I can swallow it and play. It's when you try to start in a more "grounded" setting and then halfway through suddenly step through the Door To Anywhere that my mental gears grind and smoke. It'd be like having a TARDIS materialize in the middle of Starship Troopers — there's no law that says you can't, but it messes with my suspension of disbelief in a big way.

[2] I've always found it strangely amusing that Lord of the Rings, often cited as the classic example of "high fantasy," is actually one of the most "low magic" settings you'll ever find. I've seen a convincing case made that nobody in LotR — not even Gandalf — need be higher than 5th level in D&D terms. On the other hand, it's a matter of degree ... my lil' hobbitey warden in LotRO is 60th level and has taken on a balrog, an undead dragon, the Watcher In the Water, and more than one turtle the size of a good-sized house (Why are the LotRO devs so obsessed with turtles???) — but he still easily "feels" like he could fit into the LotR story. It's all about making the fantastic elements seem "natural" in context.

I don't know if it's stress, the side-effects of working my way off the Cymbalta, or just me being neurotic, but I seem to be obsessively coming up with, and then discarding, gaming ideas. The sheer scope of work required for most of the ideas is what's throwing me off — I was so spoiled by the era in which Dungeon magazine, the Dungeon Crawl Classics line, and E-Tools were doing all the heavy lifting for me, that now that I'm faced with doing without those, I'm freezing up. I don't have the free time to just come up with dungeons for the fun of it any more — and if I did have the time, I'd need to spend it on other stuff anyway. (Like drawing. I notice there's no Suburban Jungle today, Gneech.)

For a brief, shining moment, I was excited by the idea of doing a Saga-ized sequel to Red Hand of Doom, and I put together some converted classes, but I never could come up with a method I liked for dealing with spellcasters — not to mention the fact that the idea of converting a bazillion spells just makes me curl up into a ball and whimper.

So what do I do? See if I can scrape the crap off of 4E and just approach it as a ruleset? It might be tolerable once the annoying bits (read: tieflings, flash-bang-noise, etc.) are shaved off. Goodman Games' Punjar series looks intriguing. Or maybe pick them up and convert them to S&S Saga?

Does the potential usefulness of things like the D&D Insider outweigh the stick-in-my-crawness of it all?

I don't know, maybe I'm just having one of my periodical fits. :P Certainly I'm very twitchy.

Any of my players who want to weigh in on the topic, particularly with what you'd like to see, please feel free. Any decision I made today would just be overridden by the decision I make tomorrow, and I'm hoping something will happen at Dragon*Con to kick me out of this mental feedback loop; but knowing that you guys actually had an opinion one way or another would definitely help. :)

-The Gneech

So I've bought some 4E stuff this week. Specifically, I bought Keep on the Shadowfell (the "quick start" adventure) and the Martial Power Handbook (i.e., "the 4E fighter splat"). Given my railing against 4E, you might wonder why I've done such a rash thing. The answer boils down to experimentation, combined with the old "buying stuff for gaming is sorta like actually gaming" syndrome. I am seriously jonesing to be a player just now, and when I get into that state I find myself thinking about all the neat things I could do with this build, all the neat things I could do with that build, etc.

To that end, I've been looking at the 4E warlord class, which is seriously mis-named but fills a role that people have been trying to shoe-horn into the game for some time. In some ways it's a second pass at the 3E marshal, a class that was rather shafted by A) being lackluster, and B) being put into the Miniatures Handbook instead of a book that people might actually buy. Essentially, it's a buffer, like the bard or cleric, but without the "singing minstrel" or "religious zealot" baggage of either of those classes. Frankly, "marshal" was a better name for the class, although "captain" or even just the straightforward "leader" would have worked better. "Warlord" implies a bloodthirsty horde rather than a heroic archetype.

I'm looking at the warlord for two basic reasons, first being that sirfox has made the occasional rumbling noise about doing something with 4E, and second being that I might like to build a 3.5 retrofitted warlord-equivalent instead of a marshal in case any more 3.5 gets run. S&S Saga already has an equivalent class in the noble, although I'm probably going to rename that to "captain" for the next iteration myself. If the warlord has any particularly nifty bits, I might steal them as well.

-The Gneech

It's a little early to put any real thought into it now, but being in "the final stretch" of Red Hand of Doom naturally leads to thoughts of "So, what will come next?"

My first post-RHoD priority as a GM will be to finish up that Star Wars scenario from, y'know, April. From there I'm not sure if I'll continue that game or not; as much as I like Star Wars, I've been finding myself hard-pressed to do something that isn't "ditto, ditto" of things I've already done with it. I might like to do something in the Knights of the Old Republic era, tho. (I also thought of using Saga Edition as the basis for that discussed-but-never-run Crimson Skies campaign.)

Second priority will be to actually run some Uncanny Midnight Tales. The Halloween Call of Cthulhu one-shot was a nice appetizer for that, but I want to actually get to the main event now. The character group that the players came up with for that sorta came at me from a direction I wasn't expecting, so I've had to retool some of my plans to make it work. (I chose to run "The Haunting" as a CoC one-shot largely because it ended up on "the cutting room floor" of my UMT plans but I wanted us to have gone through CoC's version of The Keep on the Borderlands.)

That just leaves what's next in the realm of fantasy. I already know I don't want to switch to D&D 4E, but I don't really want to stick with 3.X either, particularly with the group's copy of E-Tools gradually-but-perceptibly falling apart the way it is. So the ruleset will probably be S&S Saga or a close variation thereof, although at this stage part of me wants to jettison even that much connection to "pure d20" and come up with my own ruleset. (I doubt I will, though — system creation is just an urge I get periodically.) But assuming "system neutrality" for the moment, I have had the following campaign ideas:

• Sword and Sorcery — The game S&S Saga was created for, an episodic string of pulp fantasy adventures set in a Hyboria-esque world. The heroes would be a motley collection of random adventurers thrown together by fate (i.e., shipwrecked together, all enslaved by cruel overlords and needing to escape, or something similar) who then spend the rest of the campaign wandering from place to place as adventurers for hire, searching for rumored treasure, getting involved in the schemes of petty warlords or evil sorcerers, etc.



• The Red Maid of Cardolan — Set in a slightly-alternate Middle-Earth, the premise of this game is that the ring Bilbo found in Gollum's cave was not the One Ring, but was in fact Durin's ring, thought lost when he was slain by the Balrog, but instead stolen from the dwarf lord's body by an orc and traded (or stolen) among the tribes until its owner was also slain during the ambush that slew Isildur — the One Ring has not been found. The year is now T.A. 2991; Balin's company has established a colony in Moria, Sauron has openly declared himself, and while The Wise are preoccupied with locating and either claiming (or destroying) the One Ring, the Rangers of the north find themselves dealing with a new threat closer to home — a malevolent and powerful witch known only as the Red Maid of Cardolan, whose army of wights and twisted huorns are turning their attention to Bree and Rivendell, and if unchecked from there to the Shire, Angmar, Eregion, and beyond. (This idea steals some of the neater ideas from LotRO, I freely admit it. But I'd make it my own.)



• Iuz Must Die! — You've survived the Tomb of Horrors. You've turned back the armies of Elemental Evil. You've escaped the Lost Temple of Tharizdun. Now you've been asked to go on one last, great adventure. Veluna and Furyondy are openly at war with the demon-realm of Iuz the Old — and while their nations spill their blood to keep his infernal army at bay, you've been given an even more daunting task: travel Skull Road to the fortress of Iuz himself and slay him, by whatever means necessary. More of a one-shot than a complete campaign, the idea behind this game is that everybody will have a 20th level version of a previous character (Kyriela for jamesbarrett, probably Kory or Angelina for lythandra, perhaps Brother Murphy or Wadsworth for sirfox, some new character for hantamouse, Celedras as a party NPC), tricked out with 20th level gear, and your job will be as described: go to the heart of Iuz's empire and destroy him, going through whatever horrors stand in your way.

My players: I'm curious as to which of these ideas (if any) you'd be interested in. Everyone else, I'm curious as to what other comments or suggestions you might have. :)

-The Gneech

The one problem with having a unified "condition track" mechanic is that after a while, every monster more or less just ends up spamming that. Every monster with poison or disease, and all those monsters that used to have annoying stat drain or level drain attacks, now have "move the target down the condition track" attacks instead, and there are a lot of them.

Now that I've finished my first draft of all the monsters I intend to put into my "Monster Conversion Document" I need to go back and see if I can't find some more interesting ways to vary them. Dex drain might become slowed for instance, while diseases might inflict some more unusual effects like blind or possibly confused (to represent delirium).

This, presumably, is one reason the monsters in 4E all have seemingly-random tactical effects like "shifts five feet when attacked" or "teleports six squares when rolls a 20" or whatever, to give them some kind of interesting wrinkle without adding math to the fight (which is what all those poisons, diseases, miss chances, stat drains, and so on used to do). While I applaud the sentiment, I can't help but feel that too much of this takes you solidly into the realm of lasersharking, a term which I just recently encountered but which describes 4E precisely.

The key is to find balance. There's no reason to give Joe Goblin a funky power; he's a just a goblin fer cryin' out loud. But those creatures that do have an unusual ability, need to do something besides just "moves you down the condition track" over and over. Besides the fact that it can end a fight much more quickly than desired (by sending the PCs into a death spiral), it's just dull.

-The Gneech

The Saga Edition Encounter Budget system is fixed again! This time it includes separate figures for Saga Edition vs. D&D/d20, to give closer results to the SWSE experience chart. Thanks to Owen Stephens "StephenO" from the WotC boards and Rodney Thompson for their input!

-The Gneech

I've made some fairly hefty revisions to the Saga Edition encounter budget system, particularly the starship encounters section (bringing into line with the Starships of the Galaxy guidelines). I highly recommend you replace your current version with the new one.

http://www.gneech.com/swordandsorcery/index.html#encounterbudget

Thanks, all!

-The Gneech

No gaming tonight; lythandra and I are still getting over the con crud, plus the remains of a hurricane were raining all over us anyway. But I did do some thinking about gaming, which is sorta like gaming but without as many funny moments.

I've been thinking, particularly, about how one would Saga-ize D&D. In some ways, it's remarkably easy. Weapons, armor, and the base classes, I finished quickly. And you've seen chunks of my monster conversion thoughts in this space. But what's given me the most trouble, conceptually as well as mechanically, has been spellcasting.

Saga Edition is built around a philosophy of slim books and limited abilities. Even high level Jedi Masters only have a handful of powers to pull out during a big encounter.

D&D, on the other hand, is built around a philosophy of spellcasters with a list of spells an arm long. Show me a 10th level D&D cleric, and I'll show you an 18-page character sheet, most of which is spellbook.

It's reconciling these two philosophies that's causing me difficulty. On the one hand, it's not really D&D without Bigby's redundant finger and cure nasty splinter — on the other hand, do I really want to comb through 500+ spells in the SRD alone and decide who lives and who dies? Granted, there's no reason that cure minor wounds, cure light wounds, cure moderate wounds, cure serious wounds, and cure critical wounds can't easily be compressed into a single spell (not to mention summon monster I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and IX combined with summon nature's ally I, II, III etc.). But even if I do all that, there's still a boatload of spells, and that leaves the problem of figuring out how characters can learn and cast them in a way that's recognizably D&D. [1]

What SWSE does is there are a total of something like 20 Force Powers, and Force-using characters spend a feat to learn a handful of them, putting them into their "Force Suite." These are the powers that the player can call on during an encounter, and if the player wants to call on a particular power more than once, they have to either put that power into their Suite more than once, or spend a Force point during the encounter to recover a spent power.

That, to me, sounds like a D&D bard or sorcerer — call it "Spell Suite" instead of "Force Suite" and you're good to go. Perhaps wizards and clerics, instead of having pre-set spells, can choose how to fill their "Spell Suite" at the beginning of the day from either a preset list (for clerics) or their spellbook (for wizards). For that matter, perhaps wizards can swap spells in and out of their suite between encounters if they so choose?

The real problem, then, is figuring out how to whittle those 500+ D&D spells into a more reasonable list. They're not all as obviously redundant as cure X wounds; two very iconic spells, fireball and lightning bolt both do elemental damage in an area (a radius and a line respectively), but they're two different types of damage and two different shapes. You can create a single spell, say elemental burst, and let the player choose whether it's a ball of fire or a line of lightning, but that quickly loses the classic flavor [2], not to mention being a pain in the tuckus to go through and figure it all out.

Anyway, I'm open to suggestions on the subject. I was thinking I might pull out my old, old blue cover D&D boxed set and simply pull the spells out of there — it's hard to get more classic than that — and then only add any contemporary spells that are conspicuously missing from the list. Then if somebody really wants one like, say, repel metal or stone (which I have never once seen cast in any game), it can be converted on an as-needed basis.

Thoughts, anyone?

-The Gneech

[1] "Why are you trying to do a crazy thing like that to begin with?" You may be asking. That's for another post some other time. For the time being, call it a mental workout.

[2] "I wanna cast magic missile!" "Sorry, that's been replaced with arcane damage, multi-bolt option." "Gee, how very evocative." "Shut up and attack the large monstrous humanoid 4's already!"

Buddha will be in Mütti's capable hands for the next few days while lythandra, hantamouse, and I perform our annual pilgrimage to steep ourselves in geekdom. In that spirit, have another batch of reptilian monsters! I'm particularly pleased with the witch doctor...

( HiiisssSSSSssss! )