Dungeons and Dragons Blog

Wizards.com had two very good updates today.  You get part three of the preview of the Magic Item Compendium, which deals with thematically linked magic items.  Good stuff and I can see making something like this a good ongoing adventure as a character picks up the pieces of something that eventually provides him a primary persona.

Also, you get a full adventure in Return to the Temple of the Frog.  The original was published way back in 1975 and it was later picked back up in 1986.  Honestly, I’ve never seen this one but I might have to check it out.  It’s a high level adventure and well worth the download.

It’s been a while since I’ve been really excited about a D&D product.  Probably the last time was in anticipation of the Tome of Magic, which I thought was very cool.  Now with the Magic Item Compendium about a month away, Wizards.com has given us a couple of teasers which have really got me pumped about this product.

The first preview explains the augment crystals, which you can attach to a weapon or your armor to give you a specific ability.  So your fighter can his favorite sword and a variety of augment crystals he can use to give him extra bonsues depending on the encounter.  The truedeath crystal deals out extra damage to undead while a crystal of arrow deflection attached to your shield gives you an armor class bonus against ranged attacks.  This is a very neat concept and one I can see using quite often.  I mean, when your party gets to be higher levels, how many longsword +3’s do you really need?  Here you give out an augment crystal that may come in handy two or three gaming days down the road if used properly.

Preview two talks about the runestaff, which allows a spellcaster to replace one of their already memorized spells for one of the spells the staff is used for.  Also an interesting concept that gives your wizard a ton of flexibility.  If he knows he can cast a given spell using his runestaff, he can memorize something else knowing he has the spell in the bag if he needs it.

Fun stuff, and they’re also things to feed to the bad guys to spice things up.  I’ll be sure to write up a full review once the product is in my hands.  I’ve already preordered the book.

I recently got my hands on the new Dungeon Magazine and it’s another good one.  Not only do we get the continuation of the Savage Tide campaign path, but we also get a neat Forgotten Realms adventure.

First up in the mag is a low level adventure based in the town of Nesme in Faerun, which sits just outside the Evermoors.  I had to find this on the map and it’s just south of the Spine of the World and just north of the High Forest.  The local lizardpeople have been enlisted to help against Giants, but one of the outposts hasn’t been in touch and an aide to one of the main NPC’s has gone missing so the characters get enlisted to check things out.  It seems the lizardfolk have other plans though and some bad lizardfolk are planning on taking down Nesme.  You’ve got some underwater action in this adventure and the main bad guy is a female lizardfolk cleric and her pet crocodile.

Adventure number two is the sixth installment of Savage Tide.  This time, the party goes underneath the Isle of Dread where there are series of underground lakes and caverns.  There’s a lot of neat wandering monsters, some troglodyte’s and things end with a battle with kopru who’s also a thrall of Demogorgon.

Adventure number three is an interesting high level campaign that is a test of diplomacy and debate.  This one is pretty neat and while I’ll probably go back and read it more thoroughly, I’m probably never going to run it.

The smaller columns are also interesting.  Dungeoncraft is how a DM can make the game more enjoyable by putting the focus on the players.  The Dungeon talks about unusual burials and Critical Threat details a 15th level wizard who’s definitely a schemer and not afraid to use a charm to get his way.

On a side note, on the back inside cover was an ad for Fantasy Grounds II, which allows you to play the tabletop game on the computer.  I’ve seen this at RPGnow.com but I was wondering if anyone else has used it and what they’ve thought of it.

I’ve had my eyes on this pdf for a while and I finally picked it up when I purchased something else.  Treasure Chest Unlocked - Gems is a quality supplement provided by Sword’s Edge Publishing that provides a DM a detailed description of every gem in the Dungeon’s Master Guide.  For only $3.50, I picked it up on the title and description alone and after reading through it, I’m not disappointed.

Chapter One provides a good description of gemcutting.  It opens up several options for someone who’s taken a craft skill in gemcutting and it provides you with rules on how valuable your gems are after you cut them as well as an optional rule on trying to improve an already cut gem.  Good stuff here and by itself it could provide a solid source of income to a player who takes up the skill and does the job on the side.  Imagine when your players take some time off and your gemcutter increases the value of your lode just by working on the gems.

Chapter 2 is the meat of the book and this is the descriptions of all of the gems.  More importantly, they even provide color pictures and there’s a section on each gem on how hard it is to identify the gem. 

Chapter 3 includes some new rules for harmonizing and harnessing your gems.  Harmonizing allows a person with the harmonize gem feat to tap into the latent magical abilities of a particular gem stone.  Once done, it provides the wearer of the gem certain benefits, usually a small modifier to an ability check or a saving throw.  Harnessing a gem stone basically allows you to suck the life right out of the stone in one big blast.  In a lot of cases, the harnessing allows you to extend the life of a specific spell or increase it’s effectiveness.

Chapter 4 takes you inside the world of gems and provides some organizations you can drop into your world that have an interest in gems and gem cutting.  There’s also a cool cabal that have become obsessed with gem stones.  The cabal has even gone as far as creating a gem golem that’s described in the supplement. 

Overall, I liked the supplement and I have a new found appreciation for gems in my campaign.  I can see myself referring to this when I stock the treasure for a particular encounter and also plan on having a bad guy who can harness gems to blast the players out of the water.  If there’s one thing that I would have liked in the supplement, it would have been a list of the gems and what spells they’re components for.  This is a very minor complaint though because that’s all readily available.  For $3.50, it’s a bargain.

Alright, I might not have too much time to spend on this over the next few weeks but for me, the hardest part about any task is starting it so I’m going to at least try to push forward.  For several years, I’ve had a very cool campaign idea.  I’ve tried starting to write it up, made some progress then I wouldn’t pick it up for six months or even a year.  And when I started it, I was still using 2E (yes, it’s been that long) so what I did, I would have to convert.  On top of that, it’s on an old laptop so I’m just going to start over. 

So what I’m going to do first is roll up some sample players, work on the campaign, and play it out to see how it works.  Yes, it’s time consuming, but since I’ve never ran a 3.5 campaign, it’ll allow me to get used to the rules.  I do have one friend who wants to play, but we’re both in our mid-30s, have kids, and we’re an hour away from each other so it makes getting together tough, much less creating a three hour block of time to play.

Just some things about my style.  I love creating the story behind a campaign, but I’m not as into the artistic things.  So what I usually end up doing is taking maps that have already been created and bending them to be what I want them to be.  Same goes for campaign settings.  I used Faerun for a couple of reasons.  First off, there’s a lot of information out there to where if I need background on a city or nation, it’s there.  Second, the maps are already there (and I have the old Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas) which comes in handy.  So while I play in Faerun, I don’t neccesarily follow everything that’s in all of the Forgotten Realms products.  So things start in Cormyr, but I won’t be following everything to the letter.  In fact I drop my own cities and keeps where I want them.

The story starts in Tyrluk, which is northwest of the King’s Forest in Cormyr.  It centers around a group of five orphans who know little about their past and they’re raised in an orphanage run by a Dwarf who goes by Puck.  He’s cared for the boys as long as they remember and none of them have any recollection of their parents.  Now they’re all reaching adulthood (age 17-19) and all have pretty much chosen their path.  They’re life long friends and while they have their sibling squabbles, they generally get along.

The first character I rolled up was my fighter, Rothgar.  The plan was have to have a solid frontline attacker and I think I ended up getting one.  I rolled the old way (4d6, ignoring the lowest number and then shifting the numbers around how I like) and my limits were I could have only one 18, one 16, and then nothing higher then 14 for other 4 abilities.  I hit gold on my first roll and got 6,6,6,1 so I got a quick 18 which went right to strength.  After that, it went downhill though.  I did get a 16 which went to constituion and the rest of my rolls were 13, 10, 7, 7.  I pushed the ten down to nine and gave him a 14 dexterity.  I then gave him a nine wisdom, seven intellegence and a seven charisma.

As I put the abilities down, Rothgar’s story began to shape.  He’s slightly disfigured, doesn’t talk well but he was always the bigger then the other kids so he wasn’t made fun of (and he also had his four friends to back him up).  Rothgar turned out being huge.  He’s now 6′7″, 245 lbs of muscle and he’s probably the strongest person in the city.  Puck began working with him at an early age with a variety of weapons but Rothgar seemed to take a liking to the longsword so once Puck taught him everything he knew, he sent him to the local academy to learn more swordplay with the seargant of the town’s militia.  He’s now a reserve member of the town militia and helps out wherever he can.

Because of Rothgar’s low intellegence, he doesn’t get many skill points.  The eight he got (four for his class and four bonus for being a human) went all to climbing and jumping.  His three feats went to weapon focus - longsword, athletic (to help with his climbing) and improved intiative.  I equipped him with scale mail, a large metal shild and a longsword in addition to some typical trail equipment (rope, backpack, bedroll, that kind of stuff).

One down, four to go.  Next up will probably be the ranger, Calix.  He’s sort of the parties leader and jack of all trades.

UPDATE ONE

I forgot to mention this, but Rothgar’s alignment is chaotic good.  So his standing in the town militia is as a reserve not because he can’t fight, but it’s because he’s poor at taking orders.  Also because of his low charisma, he’s not a real leader.  The party is going to be a mix of chaotic good (Rothgar, the rogue and the wizard) and neutral good (Calix the Ranger and the cleric).

I haven’t bought anything since I picked up Fiendish Codex II.  Honestly, I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything not related to baseball and while I was hoping to get back into writing my campaign, it looks like once again it’ll be on the backburner.  I am excited about one upcoming product though, and that’s next month’s release of the Magic Item Compendium.

While I’m not too keen on the price tag ($35), magic items are almost as interesting to me as spells.  As a DM, a good magic item can be the focus of an entire campaign and stocking the party with a nice array of magic also makes them feel like they’re advancing in power.  I own all of the original Encyclopedia Magica’s from 2E and enjoy flipping through them so I hope this new product is worth the price tag.