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Let's Play Hell's Rebels has a project page!
It’s right here, and you can also access it via the Projects link on the site’s header. Turns out I’ve already published a lot of stuff about this project over the years.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Wilderness Hazards
Continuing our read of the Hazards section, we’ll now see a few Wilderness hazards. These are all naturally occurring, and most are extra-dangerous versions of the terrain we saw earlier.
Wilderness Hazards
Chokedust Cloud (Level 2 Lurker)
A more dangerous version of the stuff you might find in ash wastes, silt pools, and deserts with particularly fine sand. This is a 3-by-3 area of particularly fine and powdery stuff, and the slightest disturbance will cause it to form a cloud.
Characters can roll Perception to notice the area is different, and if they pass that first test they can roll an easier Nature one to learn exactly why.
The hazard triggers when someone steps into the area, or when a portion of it is included in a blast or burst attack. The entire area erupts into a choking cloud that attacks the Fortitude of those standing on it. On a hit it blinds and inflicts ongoing 5 damage (save ends). The cloud stays around after this - victims cannot save against its effects while they remain inside. I imagine it also attacks anyone who steps into it after this.
Characters can roll Acrobatics when moving into the area to avoid disturbing it, and they can roll Endurance to steel themselves and gain a +2 to Fortitude against the cloud’s next attack.
Badlands Tremor (Level 5 Lurker)
A small localized earthquake. It has four epicenter squares scattered through the encounter area. The GM can either roll randomly or place them for maximum inconvenience.
Characters can roll Perception to listen for the groaning noise that precedes the tremor, and then Nature to identify it as an incoming earthquake and (with a good enough roll) where the epicenters are.
The tremor starts when the encounter does - roll initiative for it. On its initiative count, a random epicenter makes a Close Burst 5 attack vs. Reflex that damages and knocks prone on a hit, half on a miss, and makes its area difficult terrain.
The only countermeasure is an Acrobatics check on your turn to brace yourself for the next tremor. Staying away from the tremor areas also works, but it might not be feasible depending on the map’s layout.
Silt Sink (Level 8 Lurker)
A much more dangerous version of the Silt Pool terrain from before. This is a 4-by-4 squares wide, 30-foot deep hole filled with silt.
It takes a Perception roll to notice the ground is different, and then a Nature check to realize this is a deep pit that could bury someone.
If someone steps onto the pit’s area, they suffer an attack against their Reflex. On a hit they take fall damage (3d10, as if the pit was empty), and then get immobilized and begin to take ongoing 5 damage until they escape.
An escape attempt requires a series of Athletics or Acrobatics check against the pit’s escape DC. Each success causes the victm to rise 10 feet towards the surface. If they’re still in the pit at the end of their turn, they remain immobilized however. So it takes 3 successes for someone to fully escape.
Another character can try to help the victim if they can find a way to reach them (such as with a long branch or pole), using a move action to automatically pull them up by 10 feet.
Devil Dune (Level 9 Obstacle)
A huge pile of loose sand that is currently being pushed by the winds and moving at a surprisingly high speed. This could be a natural phenomenon, or it could be the work of an angry spirit.
It can be automatically noticed, and there’s a Nature check to realize it’s dangerous. The dune rolls Initiative, and on its turn it shifts 4 square towards the nearest creature. When it enters a creature’s space, it can attack their Reflex to try to engulf them. This damages, slows, inflicts ongoing 5 damage, and obscures vision beyond 2 squares (save ends all). On a miss, it just slows for a turn.
Someone who starts their turn entirely inside the dune takes an attack against their Fortitude, which deals heavy damage and restrains. It takes an escape roll, not a save, to get out of the sand.
The only countermeasure, other than staying the heck away, is the option to roll Acrobatics as an interrupt before the dune attacks your Reflex. The result of the roll becomes your new defense against that attack, even if it was lower than your Reflex.
False Oasis (Level 13 Elite Lurker)
This 6-by-6 square area looks like an oasis, but it’s actually an illusion. Behind it is a 2-by-2 area filled with blood-sucking creeper plants, which counts as blocking terrain. Sounds like just the kind of thing a group of sand brides would set up.
An Insight check might let someone recognize the oasis as an illusion, but not identify what it hides. A harder Arcana test can do both.
If someone gets to within 3 squares of the illusion’s borders, the hazard rolls initiative. On its turn, the creepers reach out and try to pull the victim, an attack against AC that deals no damage and pulls the target 2 squares. This can target up to three creatures, so it not being an opportunity attack is actually an advantage. There’s enough time for multiple victims to approach the sweet, sweet illusion.
If a character starts their turn adjacent to the actual creeper squares, they’re targetted by an opportunity action that attacks their Fortitude and, on a hit, weakens and inflicts ongoing 10 necrotic damage (save ends). On a miss, it deals 5 necrotic damage.
If you can’t pierce the illusion or staying away is not an option, you can destroy the false oasis with violence (105 HP, vulnerable 15 radiant).
Dust Funnel (Level 15 Blaster)
A tornado, more or less.
Roll Initiative for the hazard when combat starts, and choose a square on the battle map. On its first turn, the dust funnel manifests in a Close Burst 2 around that square, and takes up that much space.
A Perception or an easier Nature test can identify this spot as the forces build up, before the funnel manifests.
On its turns, the funnel moves 1d10 squares and makes an attack against anyone who happens to be in its area. On a hit, it damages, knocks prone, and immobilizes its targets (save ends). Until the target passes a save, they get dragged along with the funnel whenever it moves. Of course, targets who get dragged along will suffer the attack again next turn, since they will be in reach of it.
Imagine if this thing manages to grab every other combatant, monsters and PCs alike. That’d be hilarious.
Characters can make a hard Nature check to figure out where the funnel will move in its next turn, and if they can’t escape its path they can spend a standard action to grab onto something and get +4 to all defenses against its next attack.
Desert Glass (Level 17 Obstacle)
We already saw what an even mix of sand and powdered glass can do. This is a stretch of ground that’s mostly pure glass, in much bigger chunks. It’s super slippery and cuts you to ribbons if you fall.
The hazard covers 20 contiguous squares, in any configuration the GM wants. All of them are difficult terrain. If they’re not obvious, such as if there’s a thin layer of sand over them, they can be identified with a Perception test.
Anyone who enters, starts their turn, or stands up from prone on one of these squares takes an attack against Reflex that damages, knocks prone, and inflicts ongoing 10 damage (save ends). It the target was already prone, they are dazed for a turn instead.
If one or more squares of the glass are included in an area attack that has the cold, thunder, or force keywords, the affected squares make a Close Burst 1 attack that deals the same amount of immediate and ongoing damage as the other one, and then disappear. They got shattered and blew up.
Venomous Spines (Level 21 Blaster)
These are from a species of tree that grows on some of the rare jungle biomes of Athas. When someone gets near, the tree forcibly ejects an omni-directional cloud of venomous spines.
A Perception check can notice there’s something funny about that tree. A Nature check can identify it before the PCs enter its range.
The attack hits a Close Burst 5 around the tree, dealing heavy poison damage and making a secondary attack that on a hit blinds and inflicts ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends). On a miss, it deals half damage.
Someone who knows the tree is dangerous can close in without triggering it with an Acrobatics or Stealth check. They can then use hard Nature checks to reduce the size of the burst by 2 per successful check, entirely “disarming” the tree with the third success. I’m guessing they’re plucking the spines.
Defiled Plain (Level 24 Obstacle)
A patch of ground so thoroughly defiled it’s not just dead, it’s “undead”. Anyone stepping on it will have their life force drained.
A Perception check can tell the ground is unnatural, and an Arcana check can identify its danger.
The attack deals heavy necrotic damage and inflicts vulnerable 10 to all damage (save ends). The first failed save causes the target to lose a healing surge, and the second one makes the vulnerability permanent until cured by a ritual like Remove Affliction. A miss deals half damage.
A character near or on the affected area can make a hard Arcana check to neutralize it for a turn. Characters without Arcane Defiling powers or abilities have a +2 on this test. Those who have these take a -2 instead. A preserver (which I assume means someone without those abilities) can choose to spend 2 healing surges to destroy the hazard, which I guess means they can restore some of the place’s lost life. The book says those healing surges can only be regained through an extended rest, which feels redundant but I guess means no other trick that would normally allow an early recovery can do so.
Final Impressions
These hazards are generally scarier versions of the terrain we saw earlier, so they’re certainly appropriate for inclusion in battles taking place in that terrain.
And that’s it for the book! I hope you enjoyed the reading. I’m trying to think of what to do next, so any suggestions are welcome.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: A Decision
As I mentioned in a post back in December, I’ve been actually playing this solo game in a sporadic fashion for years. And as I said back when I started, I planned to post it here. So why didn’t I?
Basically, it was anxiety over art.
The first thing I was going to do was to post the stats for my player characters, and since these were going to be “proper blog posts”, I decided I wanted to have illustrations for them just like I have for all the other characters I posted before.
My method of procuring them was going to be the same. I’d use search indexes and trawl some specific art sites for published images I could add to the post, with proper credit and a link to the original.
For certain characters, that’s dead easy. But for a couple of others I ended up never finding an image that exactly matched what I wanted. Or when I did find one that had the right vibe, it turned out the artist explicitly forbade this kind of usage, even with proper credit. Also one of my sources was Pinterest and I had just learned that one site had a serious “proper credit” issue. Whoops! What to do?
I know exactly what suggestion is already forming in a lot of your brains right now, and I’m gonna stop y’all right there and say “no”. I’m not using AI for this, or anything else. Not now, not ever.
So after way too long you’ll get those posts without illustrations at all. I can’t draw, but I can write, so you’re getting verbal descriptions. And maybe then I can finally proceed with publishing this.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Hazards
Even if the stuff we saw on our previous post was pretty hazardous, none of it counts as a “hazard” in mechanical terms.
The main difference is that Terrain is entirely passive. It might do something when you step on it, or it might allow a character to perform some special action when next to it, but it never initiates any interaction.
Hazards, on the other hand, have enough “agency” to count as a monster for encounter building purposes. They can make attacks, and can also be disabled by the methods outlined in its description. Traps are the most popular example of hazards, but these rules can also model dangerous terrain features that weren’t built to do harm on purpose. Obviously, unlike real monsters, traps and hazards don’t use tactics. They just follow their “programming”.
Traps and hazards have their own set of roles:
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Blasters make ranged or area attacks. A crossbow trap is the most popular example.
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Lurkers can disappear for a while after making their attacks, so dealing with them is harder. A blade trap that retracts into the wall is a good example.
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Obstacles impede movement, both by their presence and with attacks that slow the target down. They might block passage entirely or require characters to make tricky movement or puzzle-solving skill checks to pass.
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Warders are alarm systems. They can have damaging attacks too, and will make them as soon as they detect intruders, but their main function is to warn others about the presence of those intruders. The alarm might only sound once, or keep sounding while the hazard persists. In truth, this seems to be kind of a catch-all category. If the hazard can’t conceal itself after attacking and doesn’t really impede movement, it’s a warder. A shrieker mushroom is a non-damaging example.
In the summarized descriptions below, I always start with a description of the hazard’s nature and appearance, what it does when triggered, and how to avoid or disable it.
Arena Hazards
This subsection details hazards that might be found in the many gladiatorial arenas of Athas. They’re placed on purpose to make things more “interesting”, but they’re not really traps per se.
Worthy Sacrifices of Draj
This is a 3-by-6 square pile or corpses with their hearts torn out. Animated corpses, that will try to grab, pull, and gnaw on anyone they sense nearby. It’s a Level 8 Obstacle.
PCs can notice the corpses are animated with Perception or Religion. The pile makes opportunity attacks that damage and grab against any character who steps adjacent to it. Roll Initiative for it after the first such attack. On its turn, it will try to pull any grabbed victims into itself, dealing the same damage as the initial attack and inflicting ongoing 10 necrotic damage while the victims remain inside.
A PC can choose to make an Acrobatics test when they step adjacent to the pile to avoid the opportunity attack. They can disable it either by good old fashioned violence (70 HP, resist necrotic, vulnerable radiant), or by improvising an exorcism with Nature and Religion. This is a complexiy 1 skill challenge where each failure deals 5 necrotic damage to the PCs.
Blood Trees of Gulg
These are large trees with red leaves. The main arena in Gulg has about a dozen of these planted in a semi-random arrangement. Their trunks completely fill a square and count as blocking terrain. Their branches stretch 3 squares in every direction from the trunk.
The rumor that these trees have red leaves because they feed on blood is false. The leaves are naturally red, and the trees are mostly harmless. They only turn carnivorous when they’re about to bloom, you see.
There’s no fixed blooming season - the timing for that is rather random. For this specific arena, at most 3 trees might be dangerous at a time. The rest are still blocking terrain, of course.
Blood Trees are level 9 Warders. Their presence is obvious, and a Nature or Perception check can allow a PC to notice that a given tree is “primed” and what its reach is (it’s 3).
When someone steps into that reach, the tree makes an opportunity attack that damages and knocks prone on a hit. On its turn, it apparently uses another set of branches to make attacks against Fortitude to damage, poison and fling away anyone it hits with those. That’s ongoing 5 poison (save ends), plus a secondary attack that makes a 5-square push on a hit.
Blood trees can be destroyed by violence (100 HP, resist 10 poison); and a PC can succeed at a Nature check when stepping into their reach to avoid the opportunity attack and be ignored by the tree for the rest of the encounter.
Obsidian Façades of Urik
The arena in Urik is a former pit from an obsidian mine. Its walls are wickedly sharp and good enough at absorbing heat that by noon the arena resembles a huge natural air fryer. Guess when fights take place.
Characters inside the arena are exposed to Sun Sickness, a disease detailed in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting that probably represents heat stroke and dehydration. The walls are a variable level Obstacle, and moving adjacent to them subjects the character to an attack that deals mixed physical and fire damage that rises with tier. Characters doing so on purpose can attempt an Acrobatics check to avoid this.
Next up
Wilderness hazards! Because the world itself is also out to get you.
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Let's Read the 4e Dark Sun Creature Catalog: Athasian Terrain
We’re done with monsters for now, and we’re getting into a section about terrain.
Terrain is as important a building block for a fun encounters as the monsters that make it up, and this section has some uniquely Dark and Sunny examples for you to add to your battlemaps.
Barbed Cacti
Even when they don’t uproot themselves to hunt you down, Athasian cacti can still be dangerous. These specimens have sharp spines that break off and stay stuck to you. Lines of barbed cactus squares can be used to cordon off some areas of the battlefield, and provide an excellent barrier for artillery monsters to hide behind.
Entering a square of barbed cacti deals 3 damage and inflices -2 to attack rolls (save ends).
Brambleweed
Like barbed cacti, but worse. Brambleweed grows in sprawling thickets that can thrive even in defiled areas, because they can use the blood or corpses of captured creatures as nourishment. Some defilers plant them intentionally as defensive measures in their lairs.
A creature that ends their turn in a brambleweed square is restrained until the end of their next turn. A creature that starts their turn there (which they will if they were restrained) takes 5/tier damage.
Defiled Terrain
This is a more varied category describing several possibilities for what might remain behind after a major act of defiling. It can be used as pre-existing terrain in an area what was subject to defiling in the past, or you can place it in the middle of the fight after someone uses Arcane Defiling or an equivalent power.
Ash Field
These are the remains of plant life caught in a defiling field. Sometimes the wind causes them to pool in terrain depressions to form areas of Settled Ash, which can act as a terrain feature.
Someone who’s adjacent to a square of settled ash can make an Athletics test to raise a cloud of it, which functions as a blast attack vs. Fortitude that blinds for a turn on a hit.
Black Sand
The residue of defiling mixed in with the local soil. People standing on black sand only regain half the normal amount of HP from healing effects. Wasn’t there an entire geographical region covered in the stuff?
Dead Magic
Areas that have lost so much to defiling that they have nothing left to give. Anyone standing on dead magic squares takes a -5 penalty to attack with arcane or primal powers, and is barred from using Arcane Defiling.
The book recommends being careful with dead magic areas, particularly if there are a lot of arcane and primal PCs in the party. Usually only very powerful defilers are capable of creating them.
Sickening Heat
This is either a mystical side effect of defiling, or it could just be a natural consequence of killing all that plant cover. Creatures ending their turn on these squares are weakened for a turn.
This terrain can do a number on your party’s strikers, and monsters who have the ability to inflict forced movement simply love it.
Glimmering Mirage
Mundane mirages are the effect of heat haze in the distance. These ones are more than that: they’re illusions crafted by malicious primal spirits. In addition to luring travelers, they persist once they get closer, and can conceal all kinds of danger behinds their alluring façades.
Glimmering mirages form walls 4 or more squares long. They block line of sight, and give concealment against ranged attacks to anyone standing adjacent to them. At the end of every turn, you roll a d6 for each mirage. A 1 means it’s gone, a 6 means it moves 5 squares, and other results mean it stays put.
Lightning Pillar
Literally a pillar of congealed lightning, probably created due to the area’s proximity to an “electric” region of the Elemental Chaos. PCs and enemies might be able to use their Arcana, Nature, or Religion skills to “hack” such a pillar and make it deliver a lightning strike to a chosen target.
Mudflats
These are natural areas where underground water surfaces a bit and mixes with the soil, creating an area that is both dusty and sludgy at the same time. Inland mudflats are the next best thing to oases, and draw many animals and people who learn to extract water from them.
Particularly thick mud flats are difficult terrain, and can contain mud sink squares representing deeper areas. Creatures standing adjacent to those can be pushed into them, which will immobilize them (save ends), with a slow after-effect due to the clinging mud (also save ends). Voluntarily or accidentally stepping into one would have the same effect.
Psychic Reservoirs
Fragile purple crystals that grow in psychically charged areas sheltered from the winds, these can be tapped by psionic characters to boost their attacks. It takes a minor action to tap into an adjacent crystal, which makes it crumble to dust. If the character uses power points, they gain 1 bonus point that lasts until the end of the encounter. Otherwise they gain +5 to their next damage roll from a psionic power.
Rocky Badlands
These regions are too rough to support permanent settlements, so they’ll mostly feature as ambush sites. They’re filled with teetering stone pillars that can be pushed onto enemies.
Salt Flats
These bone-dry regions are a hassle to fight in, as salt will inevitably get in the wounds and make them sting like hell. They’re also filled with loose salt piles that work a lot like the Settled Ash hazard above, except that they also slow the target if it was bloodied.
Sandy Wastes
What most people think of when they hear “desert”. They can contain 3x3-square Small Dunes that anyone might use as a hiding or ambush spot, even if they can’t normally burrow.
Silt Pools
They work a lot like mud flats, except there’s no water, just very fine dust. Usually filled with difficult terrain, and with deep silt spots that restrain (save ends) anyone who falls or gets pushed into them.
Slipsand
Sandy areas where some magical or psionic effect caused a significant amount of tiny glass crystals to be mixed in with the sand. They’re slippery and sharp, requiring an Athletics check from any who enters them to avoid falling prone and taking damage.
Tree of Life
These extremely rare plants are imbued with a much greater than usual amount of vital energy, which enables them to resist and even recover from defiling attempts given enough time. Ironically, this makes them extremely valued by sorcerer-kings and other powerful and rich defilers, which cultivate them for use as batteries.
I think earlier editions kept a more or less precise list of the remaining trees of life in Athas - they were that rare. In this edition, I believe their number is less restricted, but the most likely place you’re going to find one is still in the “boss room” for these defilers.
Trees of life emit a 5-square aura. Creatures within always regain the maximum possible HP from variable healing effects, and have a +5 to perform divination rituals.
Whenever someone performs Arcane Defiling inside the aura, or use some other necrotic power that damages one of their allies, the tree takes the damage instead. Trees have 500 HP and Vulnerable 10 Necrotic, and die when they hit 0. They regenerate 5 HP per hour.
Z’Tal Horde
A much funnier and more mundane piece of terrain! Z’tals are tiny, slimy, stinky lizard-bug-things that gather in very large swarms. They’re relatively harmless, but still a bother.
A z’tall horde fills one or more squares, which are difficult terrain. Someone who ends their movement in such a square takes 5/tier poison damage from the stink. Someone who starts their turn in a horde square must roll a save before taking any other actions. A failure means they fall prone because of the slippery slime. A close or area attack that deals at least 1 point of damage will automatically disperse a horde square with no roll required.
They’re sometimes bred as living security measures, but a horde of these annoying scavengers might naturally form around the corpse of any large creature.
Next Up
Hazards! What, you thought these were the hazards?
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