Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

I'm not a big fan of fire and forget powers, but those that wear down a resource over time I can get behind.   So, harking back to the reserves mechanic , a random idea: Using an at will power is same as usual Using an encounter power costs a number of hit points equal to the power level. Using a daily power costs a number of hit points equal to twice the power level. Again, this is is an attempt to not keep hit points from simply representing ablative damage endurance, and return them to being what they've nominally represented all along:  stamina and accumulated luck.  In this case they can also represent mystical sway.

All things are possible. All things are known. Nothing is remembered. In the Biblioteca Mundi setting there are spells available, or at least working theories, on how to do anything . However that was during the height of the Great Library three millenia ago.  Since that time all the books have been checked out and none returned.  Or more accurately:  The library has been sacked hundreds of times and it's pieces are scattered among guilds, wealthy collectors, misanthropic magicians, and the tombs of dead kings and sorcerers. If you want to cast a spell you can hope the information is easily available locally (unlikely) , or spend fifty years researching it yourself (Yay! A life well spent.) , or go raid the dungeon where rumor has it that a treatise on similar effects was once stored.

The Dungeon Masters Guide for the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons contained, among many other things, the now famous " Appendix N ".  This particular section of appendix contained material which had inspired and shaped Gygax imagination and AD&D. In a similar spirit writers since occasionally included an Appendix N or equivalent recommendations in their games.  And I figure I'd like to take a crack at this as well.  So the following is an "Appendix N" tailored to the feel of the Owl Light setting. Books and short stories Arthur C. Clarke - The Lion of Comarre Glen Cook - The Black Company series Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter , also short stories, in particular:  Idle Days on the Yann , How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Arts Upon the Gnoles . Barbara Hambly - The Sundog series M. John Harrison - The Pastel City (and other Viriconium stories) William Hope Hodgeson - The Night Land Robert E. Howard - The Cona...

Magic beans are an incursive fae plant.  Grown in the fae realms magic beans produce relatively normal looking plants given the terrain.  However, when planted in the mortal world they sprout into something completely different. Fae beings can not plant magic beans themselves in the mortal world, and most see no need to, but mortals can.  A mortal planting magic beans in the mortal world grows a magic bean stalk.  A magic bean stalk is a gigantic tangle of vines rising up to the sky where they pierce back into the realms of Faery. The seed pods grown by a magical beanstalk, are the size of small canoes, with seeds the size of chickens which are quite edible.  Unfortunately only a few are produced per vine, so they do not provide a very sufficient food source for more than a few individuals.  Also the seeds of a magical beanstalk are sterile and will not grow if planted. Magical beanstalks survive in the mortal realm for only a season before succumbing...

The D&D convention of inflating hit dice has always stuck in my craw.  That is:  hit point totals which increase in proportion to creature level. As a representation of bodily health it seems absurd that a character who could be killed at first level would be able to take a direct, full damage hit from a two-handed sword, or fall off a cliff, or even a direct hit by a missile (in some sci-fi offshoots), and survive unscathed. Over the years it's been put forward repeatedly, apparently even by the game's author, that hit points are not a measure of the character's physical integrity alone.  They instead represent a nebulous sort of luck, internal energy and survivability. But while I can understand this idea, and it would make some sense in certain games, it still doesn't sit well for two reasons: Although the immunity caused by hit points builds over levels, the damage done by a typical melee attack increases very little, especially in early editions of the ...

Combat is a significant part of D&D, and perhaps more so with recent iterations.  It may not be the defining aspect of the game, but physical conflict is a core element and it's presence generally much anticipated.  Further I'd put forward the idea that an adventuring class that has less useful in combat the ability to contribute feels a little lame while the combat monsters are dragging out the big guns. But at the same time combat is not all there is to the game.  Some games focus also on exploration, investigation, realm building, social interaction, magical research, social interaction and other areas.  These aspects of course could simply be abstracted and left handled without direct rules support, but why not make some attempt to force characters a little bit to expand in other areas? Adventuring Classes:  Warrior & Mage All characters gain one general feat (not warrior or mage specific) each level. There are only two classes which adventu...

Reading the recent Alexandrian post on saving throws and following -C's comment link to a previous Hack & Slash post , has me thinking about saving throws again. (For further related reading Hack & Slash: On New Old School saves is also of interest.) I have to admit I'm a big fan of the 3E breakdown of saving throws.  I played a year or so under 2E and the abstraction -C finds so useful, I viewed as an incomprehensible mess with little rhyme or reason. The applications of these saves aren't intuitively obvious to everyone.  I remember looking at the save tables in 2E baffled as to why characters got the saves they did.  And even in cases where it was easy to intuitively grasp why a character might have one given save better than another, I was still puzzled as to which save would best cover any given effect if it fell under the aegis of multiple categories. When Fortitude/Reflex/Will came along in 3E it seemed like a breath of fresh air. It may be that ...