Those who have them would tell that all doggos are magical. Some are mysterious and wise beyond their means.
This table is for the GM to use when a player gains a dog or wolf familiar, companion, or pet. Roll 1d10 secretly, and the players can find out when it happens. 1: Bestest Doggo. The dog is actually a Hound Archon, and can Smite Evil with its bite once per day for an additional +5 damage, and will bring your slippers and/or newspaper on command. It judges when you make bad moral choices. 2: Bad Dog. The dog is a wildly, and dangerously, misidentified juvenile Hell Hound. Once per day it can breathe fire for 3d4 fire damage (Reflex DC 13 for half), and will chew your party members’ shoes beyond repair and throw up acidic bile into your bedroll. But you really love it. 3: Weredog. The dog turns into Hans, a really confused shepherd, for three nights a month. He has no special powers, but he’s pretty handy at getting in the sheep, one way or another. 4: Smol Pupper. The dog is very young and small, and has a +6 bonus to its Charisma score. It has no way of using this particularly, but it is noticeably cute. 5: Such Doggo, Much Confuse, Wow. The dog is perpetually confused, and any Handle Animal checks used on it take a -5 penalty. However, if it is affected by a Confusion effect, it gains perfect understanding of Common and any Handle Animal checks used on it automatically succeed. 6: Eager Dog. Any Handle Animal checks to get it to fetch things gain a +5 bonus, and once it has been taught, it will do those on command without a Handle Animal check required. 7: Loyal Hound. This dog gains a +4 morale bonus against any Intimidate checks or against Fear effects, and grants +2 to these saves to anyone touching them. 8: Bloodthirsty. The dog gains a +1 bonus on attack and +2 to all damage rolls. It is aggressive to everyone who comes anywhere near it. 9: Good Hunter. The dog gains a +4 bonus on Survival checks to follow a trail or locate prey. 10: Protector Dog. The dog gains a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls when it is adjacent to a member of its pack (as decided by the dog). It will generally be aggressive towards anyone who is not part of its pack who is adjacent to one of its pack members, whoever they are. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 11 March 2019) The Forest Elves of the Llonowyn people have a magical ritual used to heal grievous wounds.
The wounded person is placed within the earth, with an enchanted seed placed on the wound site, and they are buried beneath rich, loamy soil. From this site, a humanoid-shaped tree grows, recognizable as the patient. While it is growing, it has no special protection, and can be destroyed like an ordinary sapling. If this happens, the patient dies. During this time, the tree is often adorned with candles or small trinkets remembering the patient. Once the patient has healed their wounds, usually taking a week, but a longer time for more dreadful wounds, the bark peels away to reveal the patient, naked and reformed, and fully healthy. Any missing limbs or body parts are replaced with living wood, granting a +1 permanent increase to their Constitution score. How you can use Regrowth Rituals in your game: • Sighting an Elf with a moving and mobile wooden prosthetic outside of the Llonowyn territory might a surprise for those who have not heard of them before. • A player character who has been crippled may seek out the Llonowyn people for aid, having heard of their miraculous healing. • A villain might also seek out the Llonowyn elves for assistance, either for themselves or a trusted assistant. The elves may or may not be willing to provide this aid. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 10 March 2019) It can be fun to honour players’ birthdays by giving them something new to play with. An an option that’s cheap for you as a GM is to give their *character* something new to play with.
In my home game, I tend to favour magic items of an appropriate level, personalized for the character. A low-level rogue might find a Cloak of Elvenkind, a paladin might happen across a sword that can dispel evil magic on a critical hit, or a wizard might happen across a spellbook containing a few new and interesting spells they don’t have. This could be delivered as part of their Love Letter for the week (see my earlier post) or during the game. While this can result in some power creep during a long-running game, I have found they become an eagerly-awaited and much-anticipated item. This can also be an opportunity for you to advance that player’s backstory or subplot. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 9 March 2019) Anyone who has owned one can tell you that cats are a bit special sometimes. They’re adorable little jerks, but sometimes you wonder if there’s something they’re not telling you...
This table is for the GM to use when a player gains a cat familiar, companion, or pet. Roll 1d10 secretly, and the players can find out when it happens. 1: Cat can see into the Ethereal plane, and strike incorporeal opponents without any miss chance. To anyone else watching, it looks like the cat is just shadow-boxing. 2: Cat protects anyone adjacent from any unpleasant dream effects, and any spells that target sleeping creatures. 3: Cat is actually some kind of horrific alien monster. Creatures from other planes will clearly identify the cat as a different creature, but refuse to describe what the creature is or does. Up to three times per day, the cat can make melee attacks against any creatures in range, as if the cat were a Giant Octopus. It usually does this when not observed. 4: Cat is actually an Imp, keeping track of someone nearby for its own reasons. 5: Cat is a celestial guardian, and grants Protection From Evil to any creature it touches, for 10 minutes afterwards. 6: Cat is actually a thief who has been cursed. Occasionally, will turn back into an embarrassed human, with pockets full of stolen silverware and coins. 7: Cat is actually an Adult Gold Dragon traveling the world. It doesn’t want to interfere, but observes how people treat each other, and will occasionally assist good-hearted people. 8: Cat uses Charm Person on anyone patting it (Will DC 11). It plans to rule the world, but doesn’t really have any capacity to do so. 9: Cat is a Reincarnated (dead person from character’s backstory). It doesn’t possess any particular memories or class abilities, but does show affinity for particular objects. 10: Cat is a territorial warlord and aggressively claims its territory. It has no special powers to hold those, but is immune to Fear effects, and has a +10 Intimidate skill. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 7 March 2019) Measuring an appropriate threat level is hard enough for Game Masters- browse any advice board, and you’ll find threads saying “I put my players up against this creature and it TPK’d them”, as well as “my party just walked through an encounter with three of these creatures and didn’t need healing afterwards”, often about the same creature. So imagine how hard it is for players to understand that!
It should be part of your Session Zero to discuss your GMing style with your players, so that they have an understanding whether you’ll pull punches, or give “are you *sure*?” warnings, or whether the dice fall where they fall, and to have backup characters ready to go. If you want to establish red flags (similar to when you get a little skull hovering over the top of an enemy in a video game to tell you it’s too high level for you, and so on), let them know what those are (monsters who have black eyes will be tougher, or people can see an aura around them if they’re higher Challenge Rating than the party level, for example). You should also let your players know whether running away is sometimes a good idea, and ways that they can do this effectively (3.5 has the Withdraw action, which means your opponents can’t make attacks of opportunity for running away as easily). In this case, it’s also important to *allow* your PCs to retreat, rather than having them relentlessly pursued by every enemy. Have doors they can barricade, or ways to halt enemies. Another way to handle this is to demonstrate what’s going on- having NPC warriors (local guards, or a skilled knight if you want a tougher one) accompany the party, and having them bite the dust to show how tough the critter is. Have really deadly traps clearly telegraphed, so PCs who walk straight into them won’t do it by accident. If they do walk in, and the trap/monster kills them, you want other players saying “fair enough”, not “really? That’s ridiculous!”. So, as with much of RPGing, communication is really really important. Let your players know what to expect, and let the surprises be in the plot, not in the challenge. This way, they’ll enjoy the game much more, and so will you! (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 6 March 2019) It’s a sad fact of playing RPGs that if you make a storyline dependent on a particular character, they’ll almost inevitably die. So how do you recover from a round of bad rolls that sees a character suddenly at -43 hit points?
First of all, this can really throw you. So don’t be afraid to be honest with your players and say “look, I didn’t see that coming and it’s going to disrupt the game a bit. Does everyone want to grab snacks/ have a smoke/ give me a few minutes to work around it?” They’ll understand that sometimes this just happens, and isn’t planned. Next, have some backup options. Does the prophecy say something like “the person carrying the sword of BLAH will defeat the Demon King”, rather than “this specific person will defeat the Demon King”? This way, someone can pick up that sword and carry on in their wake. Or if it’s just a mission, like “liberate my homeland”, you might have slightly more problems, unless a younger sibling or distant cousin wants to pick up where the left off? You can always introduce new characters- consider how the plot would react with them gone. If you have a magic prophecy, does a “new” candidate get introduced from the wings, like the Potential Slayers from Buffy. If someone then gets resurrected, how does the prophecy cope with two agents? (Does one of them then turn evil?) Another option is to keep them “alive” but defeated in another way- permanently injured, disfigured, captured, and so on. You want failing (and being “killed”) to still have a consequence, though, so this can be harder. Imagine if it was a TV series though- if one of the characters is killed... where does the storyline go? (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 4 March 2019) Tradition is a powerful motivator- the Tower of London is said to be doomed if it ever loses its ravens, a bell is rung each time the stock markets open, and many memorials keep a flame burning eternally to honour past war dead.
These sorts of traditions make for interesting writing fodder, if you want to “fantasy it up” a bit. Sure, someone can cast Continual Flame in a location, but having someone come to kindle the flame each morning turns it into an honoured tradition, rather than a light globe that doesn’t go out. You can also build a backwards causal link into it- the flame burns so long as a just king sits the throne, or while a grudge still burns within the hearts of the Dwarven clan- for example. Once that’s established, you can turn it into an adventure hook quickly- is it something upstream that’s changing the colour or the course of the Emerald River, or does that mean that the High Priestess told a lie? Is it some sort of genre-savvy con men setting things up to *look like* something has changed? Then, when that’s all dealt with, and the same thing happens again, you’ve already loaded Chekhov’s Gun and placed it on the mantle- your players will already know the consequences when they hear a gunshot. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 2 March 2019) Revolution is a time of change, a time of tearing down the old ways and breaking their molds, of changing the nature of day-to-day life. Which makes it perfect for roleplaying!
Now, revolutions can be a wonderful thing if you’re a downtrodden middle-class merchant or an even more downtrodden commoner under the boot of the tyrannical ruling class... but not so much if you’re one of the moneyed nobility, or someone employed to put your life on the line to protect them. It can be hard to portray scale in an RPG- by the time player characters can fight a few guards, they get it into their heads that they’re invulnerable, and sometimes make fun choices like deciding to storm the bad guy’s castle solo, at level 3. So part of what you’ll need to show is the pervasiveness of control- sure, you might win *this* fight, but the legions will definitely win the war in a stand-up battle, and fleeing should be the better part of valor in a lot of cases. Giving names to NPC assistants may help in appreciating when they get killed off by superior opponents. How you can use Revolutions in your game: • Being witness to a town turning against its corrupt lord may prompt your PCs into assisting (or looting!). Whether they’re involved or not, seeing the way that the lord’s superiors deal with such an event will say a lot about the government in general. Will they accept new leadership, or brutally punish those who deviate from the status quo? • If you have a player who wants to have a noble character, having someone in exile or in hiding due to a revolution is a good way to do it. This way, they can still feel a sense of superiority (class, breeding, or attitude), but without some of the attendant benefits (being able to afford anything they like, ignoring laws, and so on). If the revolution is still ongoing, you can always have a violent uprising unjustly massacring those who have been involved with the ruling classes. • A revolution is a good way to bring a campaign to a head- rioting and chaos in the streets, overwhelmed town guards trying in vain to hold back the lines, the military being mobilized, people who have finally had enough oppression, and so on. While all this is going on is an idea time for your players to have their big confrontation with the evil Queen, unjust governor, or so on. (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 1 March 2019) |
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