Posts

• Jul 11, 2023

  Underwater Dungeon Fantasy

  

  Underwater adventuring is one of those things that older editions of Dungeons and Dragons seemed to like more than their players did. Lots of monster books included a selection of monsters that could only be encountered under the sea, but every bit of commentary I read on those was always about how no one ever bothered to include submarine delves in their campaigns. If a sea monster couldn’t go up to the surface to attack a ship or climb on its deck, it was usually ignored by GMs.

  The Dungeon Fantasy lines learned this lesson well, and don’t spend a lot of ink on support for underwater adventures. This was a big problem for me when I was GMing Hell’s Rebels to a group of friends. This particular adventure path follows the old tradition of making PCs spend a chunk of levels 5-8 underwater. When I got to that part in my GURPS conversion, I had no idea what to do and got a bit stressed out trying to figure this out on the spot.

  Frantically researching rules in real time is no fun at all even when I am the only player, so for the benefit of my solo Hell’s Rebels game and any future run-throughs with actual players, I’m going to collect everything I know about fighting underwater in GURPS right here in this post.

  I admit I don’t have all the officially published primary sources that discuss underwater adventuring. The ones I’m using are DF: Exploits and the simplified rules that can be found in Dungeon Fantastic, which do reference the sources I don’t have.

  Underwater Fighting For Land-Lubbers

  If you’re not an aquatic creature, you use these rules when fighting underwater.

  • Your Move is limited to your Swimming move: Basic Speed/5, minimum 1.

  • All of your skills are capped at the level of your DX-based Swimming.

  • Thrusting and unarmed strikes receive no penalties.

  • Some grappling techniques won’t work. Others work as normal. GM adjudicates.

  • Swinging attacks with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. This does cover pretty much every weapon listed in DF: Adventurers, as even small knives have a Reach of “C, 1” when swung.

  • Shield bashes are -2 x DB to hit and do half damage. Don’t bother trying.

  • Blocks are impossible but you still get your shield’s DB.

  • Parries with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. Parries with close-combat-only weapons like daggers, and unarmed parries, are allowed and suffer no penalties.

  • Dodge is possible and not penalized, but you can’t Retreat.

  • No thrown ranged attacks, even from Missile spells. Special underwater ranged weapons exist and use specific stats.

  • Ranged attacks into our out of water have -4 to hit, 1/10 range, and do half damage.

  • All through this, you’ll be holding your breath under Heavy Exertion (DF: Exploits p. 21)!

  Underwater Fighting for Fish and Fish-People

  Water adaptation in GURPS has two main components. One is the ability to breathe underwater. The other is the ability to move freely while submerged.

  In monsters, the first is handled by traits such as Gills, some variety of Doesn’t Breathe, or the ability to hold their breath for a really long time even in combat. A combatant with one of these traits doesn’t need to worry about the standard Breath Holding rules.

  The second is handled by the Amphibious or Aquatic traits. If you have one of these traits, you get a lot of advantages over land-lubbers.

  • Your get to use your full Move and skills, not limited by your Swimming.

  • You are exempt from most skill penalties from being underwater and from many Swimming tests.

  • You can Retreat!

  • Your other attacks and defenses are limited as for land-lubbers. This is important for weapon users, not so much for aquatic beasts.

  From Delver to Diver

  If you’re a typical delver belonging to one of DFRPG’s standard ancestries, then you fall squarely in the “land-lubber” category, and you have to solve a couple of problems before you can dive in.

  Breathing

  If you don’t want your underwater life expectancy to be measured in seconds, you need to find a way to breathe in there. In most typical DF settings, that means magic.

  Spells

  The DFRPG boxed set includes two main drowning-prevention measures: the Breathe Water and Hold Breath spells. They have different prerequisite chains but work the same, letting you ignore that part of the rules for as long as they last. Both have a base duration of 1 minute and an energy cost of 4 to cast and 2 to maintain, reduced by skill as normal. Hold Breath is a little better because it also let you survive in non-watery environments.

  Their main disadvantage is that their duration is relatively short. Unless the PC casting these spells has a skill of 20 or more with them, the affected character is only going to be able to remain underwater for a few minutes at a time. That’s nowhere near enough for a full delve, and it’s an even shorter time if you need to maintain this spell for multiple PCs. If the caster does have skill 20 then things get a lot easier, but that costs a lot of points.

  Items

  If we expand our scope a little to look at DF supplements, then we see that Dungeon Fantasy Magic Items 1 has an alchemical Water-Breathing Amulet. You can breathe underwater as long as you wear it… but it costs an amazing $23.400. Outfitting a party of 5 with that is a very expensive proposition, unless you find them as treasure.

  A reusable casting item like a wand or ring with the Breathe Water spell would cost at least $8200. This basic version would be powered by the user, so it has the same duration limits as the spell. Doubling the price would halve the energy cost, which is better but not perfect.

  However, if we expand our scope even further and break out of the DFRPG bubble, we can go to GURPS Magic and find an alchemical water-breathing elixir that costs $600 in a setting with common magic and gives you the ability to breathe water for 1d hours! Even a minimal roll gives you a nice amount of time to explore, and per that book’s rules you’ll know the duration is about to expire 5 minutes in advance, which is better than nothing.

  That elixir is clearly the best approach for campaigns where underwater delves are a sometimes thing. They’re a little less convenient than the amulet, but the price can’t be beat. I’m definitely including this in my campaign.

  Moving

  Unless your delvers are willing to spend the time and points to become better-than-Olympic swimmers, solving their underwater movement issues also means resorting to magic.

  Spells

  DF: Spells gives us two options here: Swim and Ethereal Body. The first makes the subject effectively Amphibious, the second makes them intangible and thus able to ignore all that water. GURPS Magic additionally gives us Walk Through Water, which makes the user intangible only to water and ice. This means you don’t enjoy 3D movement while underwater… but your maneuvers in combat are unrestricted! I think I can kinda see why this one didn’t make the cut to the DFRPG.

  As with water-breathing, our biggest limitation here are spell maintenance costs, which limit our unimpeded movement to a few minutes at most. These are also harder to completely eliminate, since Ethereal Body costs 4 energy per minute to maintain and the others cost 3. Still, a caster could conceivably save these for when a fight is about to start, and only cast it on the group’s physical fighters.

  Magic Items

  I couldn’t find an always-on item with a Swim enchantment in the books I own. A basic casting item for Swim will cost at least $20500, almost as expensive as the always-on water breathing amulet. Lowering its casting/maintenance cost from 6/3 to 3/2 doubles the price, lowering it to 2/1 quadruples it.

  We might built this as a charged item instead, with each charge giving you 2 minutes of Swim time and costing 9 energy. A non-rechargeable item would cost $1350 per charge, a rechargeable one $2700 (plus $180 per charge to reload).

  If Walk Through Water is allowed in the campaign, an item with the same duration per charge would be a tad cheaper: $910/$1820/$140.

  In any of these cases, the item is best used sparingly, in the same manner as the spell. You activate it when it’s time for a big fight or a crucial skill test, and rely on your Swimming lessons the rest of the time.

  Optimal Strategies

  Given all of the above, I think we can pretty easily arrive at an “optimal” strategy for underwater expeditions.

  If your group is about to embark in a campaign centered around underwater delving, your PC party should include a caster who can use Breathe Water at Skill-20, and also someone who can use Swim at Skill-15. A druid or wizard could do both, a cleric can use Breathe Water and leave Swim to someone else. This is a hefty investment, but worth it for the amount of use they’ll get out of it. Every PC, caster or not, should also consider investing points into the Swimming skill, because it can help conserve spell energy and is pretty useful in itself. You might want to give them extra points for these purposes depending on your desired power level.

  An alternative here is for you to allow players to make PCs from ancestries that have an easy time underwater. Both Sea Elves from GURPS DF 3 and Argonians from this blog have Gills and are Amphibious. Warforged are a bit less nimble but don’t need to breathe at all. Each delver who is a natural-born diver will make the rest of the party’s life that much easier. For those who aren’t, Water-Breathing Amulets make excellent treasure.

  If you’re planning a standard campaign that features a one-off underwater dungeon, Water-Breathing Elixirs are the way to go, possibly supplemented by one or two rechargeable Wands of Swimming. The elixirs should definitely be easily available in a nearby town (perhaps it’s a coastal fishing village?). The wands might be for sale as well, or might be found as treasure either before or during the delve. Proper safety procedure is to carry two elixirs per PC, saving the second one for the return trip if the first one wears off.

  If you only have isolated underwater encounters, we’re back to learned spells, but they don’t need to have high levels. The submerged environment becomes an additional challenge, but no one is going to spend too long inside it.

  Hell’s Rebels in particular fits the second category, so I’ll be using that solution.

• Jul 8, 2023

  Let's Play Hell's Rebels!

  

  I started a Let’s Read of Hell’s Rebels way back when it was new, in 2017. I had gotten the campaign’s first three volumes with alongside a huge pile of other Pathfinder PDFs in one of Humble Bundle’s offerings.

  I managed to publish articles about the first three of those books here, though I kinda stalled out between volumes 2 and 3. I still want to “Let’s Read” the rest one day.

  This post, and the series it starts, are about something a bit different. You see, ever since I got those books I also had a desire to run this campaign, but I didn’t want to do so using Pathfinder 1e’s default system. No, I wanted, and still want, to use the Dungeon Fantasy RPG for it.

  I actually did it, too! This was during the thick of the pandemic here in Brazil, so I ran it on Roll20 with a group of friends. We got through the first two adventures, but I ended up stopping that campaign because the combined workload became a bit too heavy for me. I had to convert everything, prepare battle maps and tokens for Roll20, adjudicate setting developments in response to PC actions, and do all of that on time for the next session in two weeks while juggling all the other stress sources those interesting times produced for me and my family.

  I still wanted to go through the whole thing, whether as a GM or as a player. As a GM, I no longer had any confidence I could prepare everything I needed on schedule. As a player, I had that peculiar problem where the only person I knew who wanted to run that adventure in the exact way I wanted to play it was me. Clearly, there was only one solution.

  Running this thing as a solo campaign

  I actually decided to run Hell’s Rebels for myself as a solo campaign way back at the beginning of 2023, but it took until the start of June for me to finally find the inspiration I was lacking.

  This won’t be my first “solo” campaign: I ran through the first two Zeitgeist adventures that way between 2015 and 2017, give or take a year. That attempt lost steam due to the issues I’m about to discuss, but it was pretty fun while it lasted.

  My solo campaign attempts don’t have much in common with others I’ve seen online. Those games tend to be quite minimalistic, with a single protagonist run by the solo player, a setting sketched in broad strokes, and some sort of “divination engine” taking the place of the GM. There is no pre-defined plot at all - it’s entirely decided by asking questions to the engine and interpreting its answers. The protagonist might have a starting goal, but how hard that is to reach and what happens on the way are determined randomly. Note-taking seems pretty minimal, unless the player in question wants to post actual play reports online.

  To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach and it is in fact the one I would recommend to most people who want to do a solo game. All of the solo game products out there support it, and it is excellent at replicating the experience of being a player in a game and not knowing what will happen next.

  It’s also not the approach I’m going to use for myself. I guess I’m built different.

  The biggest difference between this game and one using the “best practice” approach outlined above is that I have a pre-defined module I want to run: the Hell’s Rebels Adventure Path. Not only do I want to play that, I’ve already read the first four volumes quite closely. While I find it easy to “forget” this stuff when I’m just a player, here I’m also the GM, which makes separating this knowledge impossible.

  And of course, I have this weird desire to run it in a way that mirrors a standard party-based campaign with multiple players as closely as possible. I want a party of heroes, and I want to be both player and GM at the same time. I want it to be GURPS, and I want to interact with the mechanical widgets of that system because I find them fun.

  And of course, I don’t want to just keep a minimal set of notes. I’m not gonna write things as a novel or anything, but I kinda want to see the game’s events rendered as a reasonably comprehensive actual play report of the sort I see in the Dungeon Fantastic blog. I’d do that even if I didn’t intend to post them publicly - it’s what I did for Zeitgeist.

  How I’m doing this

  My strange preferences bring two big risks to this endeavor.

  The first one is the lack of an “information barrier” between player and GM. This barrier and the dramatic tension it brings do not exist when player and GM are the same person. The usual strategies for separating in-character knowledge from out-of-character information do not work here, at least for me. This gives me the strange simultaneous feeling that I’m “cheating” (as a player) and “going too easy on the PCs” (as a GM). This is obviously an obstacle to fun.

  The other issue is with preparing maps and tokens. Sure, this would be much easier on me if I ran everything in the theater of the mind, but I like moving figures around on a battle map. The problem on my earlier attempts was that I would usually leave the building of those battle maps to the very last second, when I’d be in a rush to get on with the action. This also means I never took the necessary time to familiarize myself with the software I was using. So I’d stall, and procrastinate, and take two months to finish something that could have been done in a couple of days.

  To solve both of these issues, I’m going to make a resolution to never wear the GM and player hats at the same time. The GM hat is for preparation. The player hat is for “actual play”.

  The GM Hat

  During preparation, I’m going to consider myself a mix of GM and designer and I’m going to lean on my newly-discovered feelings of Miniature Envy. You see, a lot of the online friends I’ve made in the past year and a half are very much into tabletop wargaming. They have extensive miniature collections and extremely well-organized workspaces for assembling and painting them. They often post the results of their work online and it always looks awesome.

  I have neither the space, skill, nor the budget to do the same thing, but I can look at the process of building battle maps and actor tokens in GCS, TokenTool and Foundry with the same sort of perspective. Learning how to use the software and actually building the things, then, becomes a hobby in itself. And there’s no time or schedule pressure, so there’s no problem if I take a bit longer in this part.

  This will also be when I actually convert enemy stats, tests, and treasure from the adventure’s original Pathfinder 1e to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. I’ll try to make them useful to others who want to try running the adventure in a more traditional manner, but I won’t bother converting rules material for those paths my PCs never take.

  I will also perform some significant “condensation” in the campaign. Like all Pathfinder adventure paths, Hell’s Rebels includes a lot of filler fights placed to give your PCs enough XP for them to hit the expected character levels at the right times. It also features lots of elements that get added only on later books but which could be relevant from the start. Neither of these things are necessary in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign where the PCs already start out powerful and advance in a completely different manner.

  As soon as I have a large enough chunk of unplayed material, I’m going to take off my GM hat and become a player.

  The Player Hat

  To solve the information barrier issue, I’m going to just learn to stop worrying and love the cheese. When I’m wearing my player hat, it will be like I’m playing a computer game with a walkthrough open. Sure, I might know what’s coming, and I might even have a party custom-tailored to overcome those challenges, but the process of overcoming those challenges can still be quite fun. It can even still be surprising, depending on what the dice tell me.

  It helps that this is the campaign whose main goal is punching fantasy Nazis. Even if I know what’s coming, the actual process of going through it can still be fun. Let us make awesome heroes tailored to the challenge and completely stomp those fascist fuckers into the fucking ground! Let’s kick their asses all the way to the Hell they came from! I want catharsis, dangit!

  I will also try to pay special attention to my characters’ disadvantages and other traits, and obey the dictates of those self-control rolls. And when some kind of question appears during the “actual play” part, I’m going to use the Mythic GM Emulator to answer it.

  What’s in this for you?

  This effort is going to generate a lot of material for this blog! I expect readers will get some use out of my premade PCs, and out of the enemy stat blocks I generate. Everything from those stats to the “actual play” reports and design commentary is going to be published here.

• Jul 7, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Abolethic Sovereignity Encounters

  The table of standard monsters that make up the AbSov’s roster includes pretty much every heroic-tier aberrant creature, from Fell Taints (MM2) to the weaker varieties of Mooncalf (Threats to the Nentir Vale). It also includes Heroic-Tier versions of iconic aberrants usually found in Paragon, and non-aberrant creatures and humanoids that can act as covert agents or as the basis for mutated monstrosities with the Plaguechanged Monster theme described here.

  We’ll take a look at the new monsters, NPCs, and at the template here.

  Aboleth Opener

  This is an aboleth specializing in brute-force psychic intrusion, “opening the mind” of its victims using mental attacks and then dominating them for transport to the underground base, where they will become test subjects. It’s a Large Aberrant Magical Beast and a Level 7 Controller with 82 HP and the Aquatic keyword. It has darkvision, a ground speed of 5, and a swim speed of 7.

  The Opener projects an Eroding Mucus Haze, an aura (5) that is difficult terrain for enemies and deals 5 psychic damage to any dazed enemy that starts their turn inside. It can fight in melee with its Flaying Tentacles, which do immediate and ongoing damage, but it prefers to stick to mental attacks if possible in order to avoid damaging the goods.

  The creature’s title comes from its Mental Lance ranged attack, which deals psychic damage and dazes for a turn. It can then target dazed targets with Enslaved Open Mind, a minor action power that dominates the target (save ends). This recharges whenever the Opener has no dominated victims.

  Aboleth Remnant

  Not even the aboleths themselves are immune to Spellplague corruption. Exposure tends to turn them into these Remnants, whose body constantly spawns and sheds tentacles and other limbs, and whose mind is in tatters. Remnants can fly, unlike typical aboleths. They’re treated like the rest of the base’s “trash”, and sent up the chasm to harass Neverwinter.

  These wretches are Large Aberrant Magical Beasts and Level 5 Brutes with 78 HP and the Aquatic keyword. They have darkvision, a ground speed of 5, a flight speed of 7 (hover) and a swim speed of 10. They project an aura (2) of Maddening Mucus, which acts as difficult terrain for enemies and makes them grant combat advantage while inside.

  Their attacks are a Reach 2 Telescoping Tentacle that damages and knocks prone on a hit, and a Tentacle Flurry that targets enemies in a Close Burst 2, damaging and dazing them on a hit (save ends). A miss here deals half damage. This recharges when the creature is first bloodied.

  Grell Strangler

  This less-venomous variety of Grell is fond of strangling its victims. It’s a Medium Aberrant Magical Beast with the Blind keyword. It has Blindsight 12, a ground speed of 1, and a flight speed of 6 (hover).

  Its basic attack is a Reach 2 Tentacle Lash that deals physical damage and forces the target to grant combat advantage for a turn. That last one seems to be a poison effect.

  If the strangler isn’t grabbing anyone at the moment, it can use Grasping Tentacles to remedy the situation. This Reach 2 attack does a bit of physical damage and grabs the target (escape DC 16). The grell can immediately shift 1 square and pull the victim up to 2 squares, and while the grab persists the victim takes 5 ongoing damage.

  Once the strangler grabs someone, it will use Haul Away to do exactly that. This move action lets it shift half its speed and drag a victim along with it.

  These are great for separating the party and messing up their formations. Defenders and controllers should focus on locking them down to prevent that.

  Nothic Plagegazer

  This monster is entirely made by the chaotic magic of the Spellplague pocket. Its gaze can inflict a debilitating spell sickness on its victims.

  Plaguegazers are Medium Aberrant Humanoids and Level 6 Artillery with 60 HP. They have a speed of 6, darkvision, and truesight 10. They exude an Oozing Plague from their skin that causes any creature that ends their turn adjacent to the nothic to take ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends).

  The nothic prefers to keep away from enemies and attack them with its Sickening Gaze, which deals necrotic damage, ongoing 5 poison damage, and slows (save ends both). After the first failed save, the Slowed condition worsens to Immobilized.

  It can also use an area attack named Spread the Infection. This targets a creature taking ongoing poison damage, and affects an Area Burst 1 centered on them. It deals necrotic damage and inflicts ongoing 10 poison damage (save ends) on those it hits. On a miss, it still inflicts half its immediate and ongoing damage. It recharges when the nothic is bloodied.

  If it has no other choices, it will use its claws in melee. They have no riders, but Oozing Plague will probably be in effect here.

  Nothic Mindwarp

  Another nothic produced by the plague pocket. It’s more insane than usual, and likes to caper and cackle about as it drives others mad with its gaze. It’s a Level 3 Lurker with 42 HP and a Speed of 6.

  The mindwarp will try to affect someone with its Warping Gaze, a ranged attack that deals psychic damage and forces the target to grant CA (save ends). While the target is affected by this condition, the nothic becomes invisible to everyone but the target, and its basic claw attack does 1d6 extra damage. On a miss, the nothic still has partial concealment for a turn. The power recharges when the victim saves against it.

  So the tactic here is to use Warping Gaze on someone, and then try to attack someone else with enhanced claw attacks, repeating the procedure when the gaze’s victim saves against it.

  If the nothic gets surrounded, it can use its Forbidding Glare encounter power to attack enemies in a Close Burst 2, dealing psychic damage and pushing them 2 squares on a hit.

  Plaguechanged Monster Theme

  A monster theme modifies a monster in a less drastic way than a monster template. Templates turn a regular into an elite or an elite into a solo. Themes add a couple of flavorful powers without changing the monster’s level or “quality”. They’re a great way to really tie a dungeon together, even if the base creatures are very disparate otherwise.

  Plaguechanged monsters are affected by the Spellplague. They show the scars or mutations associated with it, and possess magic abilities that use its characteristic blue flames and corruptive effects.

  I was mistaken before - plaguechanged monsters do not gain the ability to sense spellscarred PCs, nor do they suffer defense penalties against these PCs. To create one, you just add one attack and one utility power to the base creature from the sets provided here.

  Attack powers include:

  • Blue Fire Burst: Encounter, triggers when first bloodied. Close burst 2 vs. Reflex, deals fire and force damage, pushes 2 squares.

  • Inferno Step: Teleport 5 squares and attack a Close Burst 1 on arrival. This deals fire damage and knocks prone on a hit.

  • Scouring Lash: At-will reach 2 melee attack, deals fire and force damage and slides 1 square on a hit.

  • Unraveling Touch Encounter reach 1 melee attack, deals necrotic damage and dazes (save ends).

  The attack and damage from all of these are expressed in terms of the base creature’s level, so they can be applied to any monster from any book - even minions, as the DMG2 has rules for applying themes to them.

  Utility powers include:

  • Burning Gaze Encounter, minor action. Invisible or otherwise hidden enemies within 5 squares of the creature glow with blue flame, losing the benefits from cover and concealment and granting combat advantage until the end of the creature’s next turn.

  • Devourer of Flame: Encounter, triggers in reaction to taking fire damage. The creature gains temporary HP equal to half the fire damage, and a +4 bonus do damage rolls until the end of its next turn.

  • Wings of Blue Fire: Encounter, move action. The creature flies its speed, and anyone making opportunity attacks against it during this movement takes fire damage equal to the creature’s level.

  Rohini, The Prophet of Helm’s Hold

  Here we have a surprise NPC big-shot belonging to the AbSov faction. Rohini is the person in charge of Helm’s Hold, which as we saw before has been converted into a hospital for Spellplague victims and has a Realms-wide good reputation for its humanitarian efforts. This is where we learn that the Hold is a front for the Abolethic Sovereignity, and Rohini is their agent. There was already some mention of it in the New Neverwinter section, but this one gives us the full details.

  The Prophet of Helm’s Hold presents herself as an attractive and charismatic female human, but she’s something fair weirder. Not long ago, she was a succubus summoned by the Ashmadai and tasked with infiltrating the spellscarred treatment center in Neverwinter’s House of Knowledge. There, a priest corrupted by the Sovereignity exposed her to an artifact named the Hex Locus, a solidified chunk of Spellplague magic. This warped the devil and infused her with the same essence that turns humans into foulspawn.

  Rohini’s main mission is to safeguard the Locus, which she moved to Helm’s Hold. Her secondary goal is to collect new Choir candidates from among the Hold’s patients and send them to the underground base. She is called the Prophet because she makes statements about future events that tend to come true (due to AbSov meddling). Her healing blessings are entirely fake, and make patients feel good just as their condition steadily worsens.

  Rohini has stats very similar to a standard succubus, making her a Level 9 Controller. There are some important differences, though. She’s Aberrant instead of Immortal. Her basic Corrupting Touch is upgraded to a Maddening Touch that does psychic damage and slides 2 squares. Her Charming Kiss turns into a Soul-Wrenching Kiss that places more restrictions upon the victim.

  As before, the victim of the kiss is unable to attack the succubus, but they also can’t willingly move away from her, closing the main loophole in the basic succubus’ power. They also take 10 ongoing fire and psychic damage while under the effect of the kiss. All of this is a (save ends) package, and it also ends when Rohini attacks the victim or uses the kiss on someone else.

  Her Loyal Consort power is upgraded to Mind-Warped Bodyguard. Now it works as long as the victim of the Kiss is within 5 squares of Rohini, and lets them teleport to switch places before redirecting attacks to the victim.

  Chartilifax

  This complicated name belongs to a young green dragon who used to inhabit the Neverwinter Wood, and which Rohini managed to seduce and subvert. Experiments performed by the AbSov’s foulspawn sorcerers have given him the ability to transform into a Medium humanoid like his master, and the Devourer of Flame power from the Plaguechanged theme.

  Chartilifax spends most of his days in the shape of a green-skinned elf in the basements under Helm’s Hold, performing menial tasks. He’s also pretty close to Rohini’s seat of power, so he’s gonna be there as a nasty surprise when the PCs manage to corner her.

• Jul 5, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: Abolethic Sovereignity

  As mentioned before, one of the things the Spellplague did a century ago was to bring parts of the world of Abeir into Toril, and vice-versa. These transplanted chunks of geography also brought whoever happened to be living on them. And one of these whoevers was the Abolethic Sovereignity, a kingdom ruled by these aberrant creatures.

  Shortly after arriving, the Sovereignity built a flying citadel named Xxiphu to act as their headquarters. Interested in studying the phenomenon that isekaied them, the aboleths started searching for pockets of the chaotic magic that makes up the Spellplague and sending in research teams to investigate them.

  One of the pockets they found was in the Underdark beneath Neverwinter. A branch of the Sovereignity built a permanent base around it and have been studying it for the past few decades, occasionally kidnapping people from the surface to serve as test subjects.

  When the eruption happened, it opened a chasm on the surface that went all the way down to the aboleth base, potentially exposing it to curious delvers from the surface. Moving the base was not an option, so they instead fortified it and began sending the results of their early experiments up the chasm as a way to discourage explorers. This worked for a long time, since the city was a mess.

  When Neverember arrived and began rebuilding, the aboleths felt threatened and began taking more active steps to divert the lord’s attention elsewhere and to infiltrate his organization.

  Goals

  After a century of research the aboleths have a pretty good handle on the properties of the Spellplague, and they have a planned use for it.

  You see, they know where Maegera is. Their entry in the book off-handedly remarks that it was a brief awakening of the primordial that caused that city-destroying eruption. The AbSov’s ultimate plan is to expose the primordial to the Spellplague, using the techniques they developed to then dominate her mind or control her in some other fashion. With a genuine primordial under their command, the Sovereignity has a real shot at taking over the whole world.

  In the meantime, they’re using that expertise on a steady stream of victims brought from the surface by their agents. These unfortunates are exposed to the Spellplague in a controlled manner. Those who fail to display the proper strength of mind and soul after initial exposure to the Plague become the monsters regularly released upon the surface. Those who pass this test are then subject to a very specific series of tortures and procedures that turn them into near-mindless members of the Choir that sings the Symphony of Madness.

  This Symphony can channel the chaotic energies of the Spellplague in ways that the aboleths can control, and it’s what they use to mutate their kidnapped victims. They also use it to broadcast nightmares all over the region, which afflict its more psychically sensitive individuals. The stronger it gets the more people are affected. This could eventually be the tool they use to tame Maegera, or could lead to the development of that tool depending on the GM’s designs.

  Player Tie-Ins

  The nightmares mentioned in the descriptions of Oghma’s Faithful and the Spellscarred Harbinger come from the Symphony of Madness. The latter in particular has very strong thematic ties to the AbSov - their starting hook sends the PC right into their clutches, as we’ll see soon.

  If the GM decides to make the AbSov a major antagonist in the campaign, then the Symphony’s nightmares will likely begin affecting more and more people. Its effects are not set in stone, but the book gives various suggestions:

  • They might make victims irritable and violent.

  • They might drain healing surges after a long rest.

  • They might impost long-lasting penalties from lack of sleep or psychological trauma.

  • They might provide hints about where to find their source.

  Stepping up the frequency or severity of these effects over the course of the campaign will provide a very strong incentive for PCs to find the source of these dreams and shut it down, leading to a big confrontation against the AbSov in their home base.

  One way the PCs might protect themselves from the nightmares is to buy these creepy little dolls sold by Helm’s Hold. If you place one of these Dreamthief Dolls under your pillow at night, you won’t experience the nightmares. Rumor has it that the dolls send the nightmares they catch to the Hold’s patients, but Rohini, who runs the hospice at the Hold, says they’re just imbued with minor protective blessings (she’s lying; the rumors are true).

  Relationships

  We already know the AbSov is busily infiltrating New Neverwinter. Here we also learn that they sort of disdain the Ashmadai, because all of the cult’s attempts to infiltrate them have only fed them more converts (including Rohini). They are however more circumspect when dealing with the Thayans or the Netherese, because they fear the powerful magic those factions might be able to bring to bear if they call on their far-away epic bosses.

  Impressions

  This is a comparatively huge entry with an extensive encounters section, as we’ll see in the next post. This leads me to think the Aboleths are intended to be one of the campaign’s top antagonists. A campaign where you start opposing (or even working for) New Neverwinter and uncover the aboleth conspiracy seems to be an easy one to make with the book’s default setup.

• Jul 1, 2023

  Let's Read Neverwinter: New Neverwinter Encounters

  New Neverwinter’s hired goons can be represented by a variety of statblocks for characters or usually-playable ancestries extracted from the Monster Manual 2, Monster Vault, and Threats to the Nentir Vale. There’s a table here with entries ranging from level 1 to level 8. It includes a Doppelganger Sneak, every stat block from the [River Rats][1] entry in Threats plus a smattering of humans, gnomes, half-elves and dragonborn.

  We also get detailed writeups for Neverember himself and for Soman Galt, and some information on General Sabine, the faction’s third big shot.

  Dagult Neverember

  As written, Neverember is a somewhat complex villain by D&D standards. He’s ruthless, greedy, arrogant and imperialistic, but he is not evil-aligned. His preferred way of lining his own pockets also tends to be beneficial to his trade partners, and he is sincere in his desire to improve the lives of his subjects even if it’s only so they’ll crown him king. He also behaves like a typical mercantilist aristocrat, which includes a dose of sexism. He treats “intelligent male acquaintances” with respect but “flirts outrageously” with “beautiful female guests”. I strongly suggests removing these traits from his personality if you want him to come off as sympathetic to your players.

  If the PCs can stomach his horrible personality, he might end up allied with them against a greater threat, even if only because that greater threat would be worse for the region than him.

  If he dies, it will cause a lot of chaos in the city, because like it or not he’s one of the region’s current stabilizing forces. The Thayans, Netherese, and the rebels would immediately feel emboldened by the chaos, and the rebels in particular will immediately turn on anyone who tries to take leadership of the city for themselves (because they want it). If no one else manages to take over, General Sabine will do it and turn the city into a brutal militarized police state. So I guess the PCs should make sure the region is set up to remain stable after his demise before facing the guy.

  Neverember is a Level 7 Soldier with 84 HP. Yes, he’s a regular, which means he will have plenty of bodyguards with him. He’s armed with a Longsword whose basic attacks inflict a -2 penalty to hit for a turn, and if an adjacent enemy shifts or targets someone other than him with an attack, he can use Lord’s Rebuke to make a free basic attack against them. He can also Taunt (recharge 4+), an attack vs. Will that targets one enemy and on a hit pulls them 4 squares and makes them grant combat advantage for a turn.

  General Sabine

  General Sabine doesn’t get a section of her own, but I’m collecting and repeating the scattered information we get about her here. She’s the commander of the mercenary company Lord Neverember hired to act as his army and police force.

  The reason he’s using mercenaries is because using his house troops from Waterdeep would make the whole situation look too much like an invasion and occupation by a foreign power. Sabine, however, is perfectly able and willing to command her army like the foreign invasion and occupation force it is. There’s not to much nuance to her character - she’s an uncomplicated brutal authoritarian. She uses the stats for the Human Cavalier from the MM2, making her a Level 7 Soldier (Leader).

  I imagine there are lots of complaints about the police brutality inflicted on the citizenry of Neverwinter by the mercenaries, though I guess Neverember manages to keep them at just below the level where he’d care. If Neverember dies suddenly, General Sabine is the most likely character to replace him in the internal power struggle that will follow, and she will turn the city into a violent police state.

  Mordai Vell, one of the leaders of the Ashmadai, is trying to recruit Sabine for the cult. As of the campaign’s start, he hasn’t succeeded yet - whether he will or not depends on the wishes of the GM and the events that happen in play.

  Soman Galt

  The acting mayor of Neverwinter gained his position because of his previous career as a government official. He’s more than a bit scatterbrained but is capable of taking his job seriously and performing it competently.

  Neverember thinks of Galt as a useful puppet, and he’s right. However, he’s someone else’s puppet. Rohini, the Prophet of Helm’s Hold, got a hold of the dwarf and turned him into an asset of the Abolethic Sovereignity quite some time ago. As the campaign starts, Galt is under an incredible number of aboleth-crafted post-hypnotic suggestions, and regularly visits Helm’s Hold to receive more. This has him looking less and less healthy as time goes by.

  It also means the aboleths are effectively in control of the city’s civil and social policies, and know everything that happens on it. They know which spots on the city wall are less defended, and send their monsters there. They’re going to have an incredible edge when they decide to really invade the surface.

  Galt doesn’t actually know any of this, and would probably go insane from trauma and guilt if he learned it. In emergencies, one of the aboleths below can assume direct control of him, switching his alignment from Unaligned to Chaotic Evil and giving him access to extra powers. Once he becomes bloodied, that control becomes stronger and he begins moving as if he was having a seizure.

  Galt is a Level 6 Controller with 74 HP. His typical dwarven speed of 5 increases to 7 when he’s bloodied. Being bloodied also activates his aura (5) of Dissonant Gibberish, which inflicts Vulnerable 5 Psychic and a -2 penalty to saves on all enemies inside.

  Galt’s basic attack is a Whipping Warhammer that damages and slides the target 1 square. He can Transmute the Unwilling as a ranged attack, dealing psychic damage and slowing (save ends). Even on a miss this still slows for a turn. Once per encounter he can Weave Nightmares in a Close Burst 2, targeting all enemies, dealing heavy psychic damage and dazing (save ends). Also once per encounter he can Twist Space to teleport 3 squares. If he chooses to appear in an enemy’s space with this, they swap positions and the enemy grants combat advantage for a turn.

  Impressions

  I think Galt is our most pleasant surprise here, in terms of both his lore and his mechanics. As for the other two, Sabine is more dangerous than Dagult if you give her a mount and fix the damage on her MM2 stat block. I think this makes sense, both in-setting and narratively. She’s kind of his Dragon, in TVTropes parlance.

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