DragonQuest Campaign Newsletter issue 5.0
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Where We Left Off..
Game Date: Sunday, April 7
Last time, Wesson the Shaper asked four of the party members to go look in on one of his acquaintances he had not been able to reestablish contact with. The other two members remained at his village to help protect against increased goblin raids. The four party members found that the acquaintance had been killed and was being interrogated by a Necromancer and several Elvish warriors. The place looked like it had been searched for something. The Elves appeared to be affiliated with the Dark Prince. After killing two of the Elves, chasing off the Necromancer, losing one party member (it wasn’t HIS fault two others fainted upon seeing the Wall of Bones!!!), and killing two zombies (the acquaintance and one unidentified body), the three remaining party members did some quick looting and high-tailed it back to the Shaper’s village before the Necromancer showed up with reinforcements.
Now the party has been reunited back at Wesson’s village. Here we find that Wesson has been joined by two other Mages (Nestor and Canisius) and about 19 villagers, let by Pliny, the Elder.
Wesson is noticeably upset by the news from the returning party members. He questions them quite a bit about what they saw there, and what they brought back with them. He says he needs to meet with some fellow wizards to confer on this, and asks that the party stick around for a bit. They are more than welcome to stay and train at the village, and holds a feast that night for them.
Tidbits (top)
Dark Elves
Dark Elves, also known as Shadow Elves, are primarily to be found in the valley called Shadow Dale. They are descendents of the branch of Elves known as the Daeldar who took to the dense forests and jungles of the south. Their skin and hair are paler than their more well-known cousins, thought typically not to the point of albinism. Further more, they do not tend to be quite as agile nor as hardy as the other branches of Elves.
Dark Elves receive the normal Elvish abilities, in addition to the following: 1).They receive a +10% bonus for casting General Knowledge spells from the College of Earth Magics or the College of Celestial Magics if Dark or Shadow Mages, and +5% for Special Knowledge spells. 2). They receive the normal Elvish bonuses for Ranger skill in either the Woods or Marsh terrains. 3). Dark elves receive an added +10% to stealth when they are in shadow or complete darkness 4). Dark Elves receive the following modifiers to their attributes:
PS: -3; AG: +2; EN: -2 MA: +3; WP: +2; FT: +2; TMR: +1
Adventurers’ Guild - When a character dies.
The AG’s actions upon learning of the death of an adventurer in good standing will vary depending on a number of things. For instance, is there proof of the adventurer’s death, who is his declared heir(s) or does he have a will denoting allocation of property, and were his heir(s) responsible for his death.
It is standard procedure whenever items or money are stored with the AG for the adventurer to sign an agreement to allow the AG to be the final arbitrator for disbursement of his property. As part of this agreement, the adventurer states who is to receive his property in the event of his demise. There is a required payment to the AG of 1Cr, which may be paid up front or taken from the property at the time of disbursement. In such cases where the adventurer’s death is unproven, the AG may look into obtaining proof (typically through means of Magic) for an additional 50Cr. If a year passes and the death remains unproven or the heirs have not stepped forward, all items and money become property of the Adventurer’s Guild.
Associates of a dead adventurer may, of course, attempt to bypass the AG procedures if they have a Sealed Letter of Credit for him which will allow them to withdraw any funds he has banked there. This will not help in obtaining any items stored with the AG. Item storage usually relies on some magical protection to safeguard the items which can identify the person who originally stored the items (or allows the AG to bypass the safeguards).
Rule Clarifications and Notes. (top)
Familiarities.
Familiarities provide a means for determining what a character knows about certain things. This is useful for figuring out if a character should know something which the Player may not be aware of or for limiting what the Player can do if they know too much. Often a familiarity will work in conjunction with skills the character has. Such skills will also point out what sorts of topics under the familiarity the character would be most interested in. For instance, a courtesan would be tend to pick up on the etiquette and social aspects, a thief would be interested in who to rob and who is a good fence, and a steward would focus more on the bureaucracies and which palms can be greased. Hence, someone with Ranger and Thief skills and familiar with a particular region would know who to rob and where good hideouts are, but they may not know of a good smith in any nearby villages or which girls are the most.. umm.. sociable. So what would be some valid familiarities?
Cities (not villages): knowledge of the layout of the city, culture, political structure, social setup, who to contact for whatever reason.
Regions: knowledge of the terrain, sites of interest, villages, cultures, flora and fauna of that region.
Secretive organizations: contacts, leaders, secret passwords and callsigns, methods, purpose.
Demons, Undead, or Fantastical Creatures: These are rare and there are lots of myths and rumors about them, so few people will actually have useful knowledge about them. The familiarity will give general knowledge about types of various creatures within that classification, including powers, weaknesses, and favorite haunts. The familiarity will also be helpful in that the character will be less likely to panic when faced with some horrific beast he has some knowledge of.
A starting character should get their home city or region at rank 2, and their religion at rank 2. For a character starting with 20,000 EXP, they should get one more familiarity at rank 2 (or increase one of the others to rank 4) for free. Adepts of Necromancy automatically have a familiarity of Undead at rank 8.
A character who has traveling companions with a particular familiarity can learn that familiarity at rank 0 just from conversations with them (with appropriate expenditure of experience points). Any higher ranks require "hands-on" experience.
Poisons and Toxins and Drugs, Oh My!
How does a toxic substance work? Well, once the toxin is introduced into the target’s system, the toxic effects will build up while the body tries to counteract it. To represent this, instead of using the traditional RPG approach of inflicting damage, we will keep track of the victim’s "Toxin Level." Each toxic substance has a "Strength", an "Onset", a "Rate", and a "Duration". Strength gives a rough idea of the lethality of the dosage, Onset is the amount of time before the poison first kicks in, Rate is the period of time between each "check point" (explained below), and the "Duration" is how much time passes before the effects start wearing off (after max. toxin level has been reached). At the initial Onset time, the target’s toxic level is equal to the Strength of the toxin dosage. For each subsequent checkpoint, the Strength of the toxin is reduced by one, and the victim needs to roll D% against [4 x (Current EN - Toxin Level)] to see if this new Strength is added to the Toxin Level for the character. If the character makes the roll, then only half (round up) the Strength value is added. The following chart shows the thresholds for toxic levels and some example effects of the toxins:
Level Threshold Examples of symptoms (these are fairly common for most neurotoxins)
Unnoticed: Toxin £ EN/6 No noticeable symptoms have manifested themselves.
Mild: Toxin £ EN/3 Tingling sensation, coordination off, slight muscle spasms, mild euphoric buzz.
Moderate: Toxin £ EN/2 Numbness, nausea, muscle spasms.
Severe: Toxin £ EN Paralysis, unconsciousness, coma, convulsions.
Extreme: Toxin > EN That life wasn’t going well, anyways…
Example: A character with EN of 18 is struck with an arrow coated with Curare. The dosage Strength is 6 and the Onset and Rate are both 15 seconds. At the 15 second mark, the character will have a toxin level of 6, which falls into the Mild range, so the character will begin suffering the Mild effects of the poison - i.e. tingling sensation and reduced coordination. At the 30 second mark, the character needs to roll 48% or better to avoid having the effects increase by the full amount. He rolls a 62, so the Toxin Level is increased by 5, yielding a new rating of 11, which pushes him into the Severe effects, and the character collapses. If he had made the roll, then only 3 would have been added, so the new Toxin Level would have been 9, which is in the Moderate range. At the next checkpoint, the new toxin Strength is 4, so the character will take either 2 or 4 points depending on his roll. In the best possible case, assuming the character makes every roll, his toxin levels will go to 6 (48%), 9 (36%), 11 (28%), 13 (20%), 14, and level off at 15. The percentages given show the D% he needs to roll for each subsequent checkpoint (assuming he takes no Endurance damage within this time). The odds of this character making all those rolls would be about 0.97% (about 1 in 100), so most likely he would miss several rolls and end up dead within 1½ minutes. If that arrow had struck a smaller creature, say with an Endurance of 10 or 11, it would have been paralyzed after 15 seconds, and dead soon after. The arrow would have been a nearly instant death for a smaller critter such as a cat or badger.
Going back to our example, assuming our friend makes all his rolls and actually survives, we then have to look to the Duration for the toxin to figure out how long he’s going to be in this rather useless state. Curare has a Duration of about 20 minutes, meaning the Toxin Level reduces by 1 point every 20 minutes. So our friend will be paralyzed for about two hours before the toxin level will reduce down to the Moderate level. It will be about 5 hours before the effects have worn off completely. (About 20mg of Curare will bring about a 30 minute paralysis for most people. Just about double that is enough to get a 50% kill rate. I haven’t found any data on how long it actually takes for the effects to wear off, so I’m just trying to keep it reasonably simple.)
For poison coatings on weapons, Onset and Rate are halved for Endurance shots, so the poison affects the victim twice as quickly. The poison coating is good for 2 full strength hits and 1 half-strength strike, after which the poison is considered wiped off the weapon.
In the case of repeated doses, the Strength of subsequent doses is added to the current Strength of the toxin still in the victim’s system and is applied at the upcoming checkpoint. The victim gets to make a resistance roll as normal to reduce the entire new Strength of the toxin.
If the poison is applied by a character with Assassin skill and who tailored the dosage for the victim, then the assassin declares what the attempted result of the poisoning is (quick death, lingering death, or just a really bad experience), and the GM applies the four times the Assassin’s rank as a straight modifier to the victim’s resistance rolls as needed to achieve the assassin’s goal. If the victim is being tended by a Healer, four times the Healer’s rank may be added as a bonus to the victim’s resistance rolls. What you will see with this is that often a Healer will prolong the life of the victim, even though they can’t cure them without the antidote.
Antidotes: An antidote works similarly to a poison. (A bit of irony here… often poison antidotes are, themselves, poisons. Hemlock, for instance, is antidotal for Strychnine. Just make sure you get the dosage right…). An antidote will not immediately cure the poison, but will, instead, reduce the remaining Strength of the poison as well as decreasing the duration of the effects.
This rule applies for most poisons. Some toxic substances actually do kill by causing damage. Lye, for instance, burns a hole through the stomach which then releases the stomach acid to digest the other organs - essentially a stomach puncture wound! Hydrazine gas blisters the lungs - there isn’t an appropriate grievous injury for it, but it is actually damaging the body, and the character will be severely impaired because he won’t be able to get enough oxygen (though he’ll get more than enough pain) - so it may be appropriate to reduce the character’s Endurance and especially Fatigue (like, instantaneous ZERO FATIGUE!)
This also provides a means for determining effects of drugs such as narcotics, alcohol, and stimulants. With such drugs, characters may build up a tolerance (for Alcohol, this would be measured through the Drinking Skill), which would be a modifier for the resistance rolls. For instance, one "drink" of alcohol should have a Strength of 1, a Rate of 10 minutes, and a Duration of a half hour. Which means if you have 3 drinks right away, they would hit in 10 minutes with a Toxin Level of 3. 10 minutes later, it would go up to 4 or 5, depending on the roll. One half hour after drinking them, it would be up to 5 or 6. At the one hour mark, this would drop down by 1, and then again at each half hour thereafter until the Toxin Level reaches 0. For most characters, they would still be in the Mild range the whole time.
For a given Poison Strengths, the Toxin Level for the victim will build up to the following ranges depending on their resistance rolls:
Strength 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Toxin Levels 1 3 5-6 8-10 11-15 15-21 19-28 24-36 29-45 35-55 41-66
Changes in the Combat Rules
I think we have now become reasonably well acquainted with a lot of the changes in the combat rules. There are still lots of little things to get a handle on, and a few rough spots to smooth out, but I think we will soon be about ready for a "graduating exercise".
Ranger skill
Although a character can specialize in a number of different terrains, the specialties essentially fall into three categories: Caves, Wastes, and Others. I group them like this because there doesn’t seem to be much cross-over in some abilities between the groups, particularly in tracking skills.
Caves involve rough and rocky terrain with questionable footing and occasional rock climbing or rappelling. There is very sparse plantlife and probably not much noticeable animal life. Tracking is difficult because it primarily relies on footprints in gravel and unusual spillings of loose rock and shale. Location of water will probably be fairly easy, but food may prove more difficult.
Wastes would primarily be desert regions with lots of sand. The terrain is fairly easy to travel, but the blowing sand and hot sun can be major concerns. Likewise, finding water can be quite difficult. The flora and fauna will be sparse, but plants will typically be a vital source for water. Tracking involves following the footprints in the sand and, in case of the tracks being filled in by blowing sand, a knowledge of where the prey is likely to be heading. Also, wastes don’t provide much opportunity for climbing things.
Anyone specializing in the Other terrain types are used to dealing with lots of plant and animal life. They typically track animals by prints in the soil, scat, and most importantly, effects on plantlife (broken stems, crushed grass, chewed leaves). Location of food and water will be fairly easy. Climbing will typically be in the form of tree climbing rather than rappelling.
For urban vs. nature settings, if a character does not have a skill which lends itself towards the appropriate setting, they will be penalized for tasks which are dependent on the environment. For instance, an expert thief with no outdoors experience (shown by the lack of the Ranger skill) would be harder pressed to avoid making noise and leaving tracks than a woodsman would. Similarly, a character who has Ranger but no Spy/Assassin/Thief skill would be harder pressed to blend into crowds.
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