Three Spell Monte: Two Pages of Spell Cards

No, not those cards.

Cards have been recognized as a great way to keep track of spells in a fire-and forget system since at least 2nd edition D&D. My insistence in the current campaign that each spell be castable only once a day makes this even easier, with no need for duplicates. Maybe, in fact, I'll work up some spell cards for those rules and my players.

I'm keeping text to 18pt, unlike 3rd ed ...

In the meantime, here are spell cards for the 12 magic spells that are all you need to play the one page starter rules (see here and here). The way these spells are going to work is almost tailor made for cards - or so I realized. You know as many spells as you have written down in your book, which varies with your intelligence and with how many spells you have found during adventuring. You can take a certain number of spells with you each day, ready to cast, depending on your level and intelligence.

When you cast them, you turn them face down; the extra moons and hourglasses are to paste on the back of the card so you can see when they'll be recovered. Spells require either 10 min (hourglass) or a full night (moon) to recover; I've ditched the at-will casting for now, finding it hard to balance. The number at top right is the minimum caster level at which the spell is available. That's it; no such thing as "spell levels", or rather, those equal caster levels.

Here they are shrunken; click for full size:

In the next couple of posts I'll fill in the wizard class with the actual spell rules and with ... Lab Abilities.

Three Spell Salad: Levels 2 and 3

In our quest to strip down the classic spells of D&D to the essentials, we have a new contributor, JD Jarvis, whose picks don't change our 1st level selection smuch but get added in to the next 2 levels.

Invisibility is the clear winner for super wizards everywhere, with 4 out of 6 desert-island spellbook compilers choosing it. Behind it we have a pack of four, each tied at two picks: Web, Levitate, Mirror Image and ESP.

Mirror Image is cool ... but it serves much the same function as Invisibility. Some people would give ESP the heave-ho on the grounds it's a plot spoiler. I just nerf it into Detect Thoughts, and if the being fails a Mind save the caster gets to sample one thought from its stream of consciousness. Levitate and Web, together with Flaming Sphere, are the more physical spell effects that would anchor the Day list if I picked three "Day" (straightforward) and three "Night" (arcane) spells. But with Feather Fall being expanded to Weightlessness, Levitate is too much like that and too much like a certain spell coming up next level. So the final three are:

ESP: Overnight recovery at (caster) level 3
Invisibility: Overnight recovery at level 3
Web: Overnight recovery at level 3

By the way, I'd probably pick Knock/Wizard Lock for the third of the level 2 Night list.

I'm not sure of the wisdom of allowing turn recovery for some of these, but the levels in question are high enough that the "Basic" rules don't have to worry about that.

The level 3 spells ... well, Fireball and Dispel Magic are clearly the A-listers, with all 5 contributors choosing them.  This is where the limitations begin to grate; Fly gets 2 votes but there are some other strong contenders, like Haste, Clairvoyance and Monster Summoning. The Day list would really start to shine here with Fireball, Fly and Haste, while for Night effects, the ability to summon a stronger monster, dispel magic and use clairvoyance would have to do. For now, let's go with:

Fireball: Overnight recovery at level 5
Dispel Magic: Turn recovery at level 5 (with no re-tries to dispel any one effect)
Fly: Overnight recovery at level 5

Next: up some comments on how this approach would fit into a class system, plus spell cards!

Three Spell Rhumba: Level 1

So ... the 49 Page Rules will be a "Basic D&D" - like product, with rules for player character levels 1-3 but allowing for NPC foes up to level 6. This means I get to focus on only the first three levels.

Four of you weighed in redoubtably on my three-spell challenge: Courtney of Hack & Slash, Changeling Bob, the Rubber Duck and Paul. There was actually quite a bit of consensus, so that I could pick six spells at first level and three at first that had all gathered multiple votes, and very few multiply-endorsed spells were left on the floor. This was as I had suspected; with the classic spell lists and even up through 3rd Edition, some spells clearly stand out as winners.

Here's the first level. You get to pick one each of a spell that takes the whole night to recover, a spell that takes a ten-minute turn to recover, and a spell you can cast at will. At character level 2 a wizard gets to pick another spell. Spells can get easier to recover as you gain levels; I put these power-ups on the even numbered levels because you get new spell levels on the odd-numbered ones.

Spell Recovery: Charm Person Night L1 Turn L4 Feather Fall At Will L1 Light At Will L1 Magic Missile Turn L1 At Will L6 Shield Turn L1 At Will L4 Sleep Night L1 Turn L6

I like to tweak spells to make them maximally useful. So yes, Light can be cast on someone's eyes, but they get a save to see if it lands on their hair instead, and let's also say you can only have one Light on at any given time. Shield basically creates a disk shaped force field no more than a yard off the ground that can be used to haul treasure, block a door, and thousands of other uses. Feather Fall can make you feather light for six seconds, enough to be hurled by the party strongman up onto that remote ledge.

Well, this is a minimal wizard. But she's guaranteed to get two out of three of the Most Useful Spells at first level, and has the weaker powers compensated by at-will use. It's a way of smoothing out the magic-user power curve by boosting first level powers, while making the higher-level powers not multiply so dramatically.

I'll do levels 2 and 3 next post, and I'm also thinking about splitting the spell lists into, for want of a better word, Day and Night paths. Where, for example, Day = Light, Feather Fall, Shield, Magic Missile, Create Rock, and Grease/Glue ... and Night = Ventriloquism, Unseen Servant, Summon 1 HD Monster, Comprehend Languages, Charm Person and Sleep. That gives a little more choice but doubles the spell list's size.

Give Me Three Spells ...

Last summer I expanded on all those color magic spells. This summer I'm considering stripping them down.

What's the thickest part of any D&D edition or clone? Easily the spell listings, followed by the magic item listings. Does it have to be that way? Hell no. Especially not as I gear up for the 49 Page Rules Project  ... an entire clone-like adventure game presented in modular, "one page rules" format that you can rip and plunder for your own games.

After all, we all know what the "staple" spells are at each level, the ones you keep memorizing over and over again. Then there are the "weird" specialist spells like Spider Climb and stuff ... but maybe those could be bought on scrolls, or found as treasure. After all, what you do is just hoard them up anyway.

Imagine there's only 6 spells at 1st level and 3 at each level thereafter.

And picking up a good idea from 4E, that was ridiculously overextended to character classes it shouldn't have reached: you start with one of the two weakest 1st level spells as an at-will power, then one of the next two as a power you need to rest 10 minutes to recover, then one of the two strongest as a power you need to sleep on. At 2nd level you get another 10 minute power. At 3rd you get one of the three 2nd level spells, and at 4th you get another, at 10 minute or overnight levels depending on their strength. And so on.

6 pages. For everything.

Are there other spells out there? Hell yeah. In the hands of nerd wizards with more time to do scholarship than adventure. But they will have to be found. They're in the DM's treasure section, not the players' handbook, which now has a grand total of 24 magic-user spells through 7th level, or 12 spells if you're writing a "Basic" book that only goes up to character level 5. That's just 6 pages, or 3 pages for Basic, at 4 spell descriptions a page.

So, participation time. Pick a magic-user spell level (any edition D&D, really, because I have a suspicion the answers across editions are going to look very much the same).

If it's first level, pick 6 spells. If it's any other level, pick 3. Those would be the only spells any adventuring magic-user had at that level. What would you pick for power and interest value? And are these any different from what players pick in your game, especially if it enforces pre-memorization?

What's Happened To Your Stuff in the Inn?

Kind of old news by now, but while I was away from the blogosphere, my table submitted to the Fight On! / Magician's Manse contest took an Elite Honorable Mention, and is headed for their Big Book of Tables. Its title: What’s Happened To Those Dead Bodies You Left In The Dungeon Yesterday? So if you want to see it, hang tight until the BBoT comes out!

Has anyone done a table dealing with another common "what's happened" situation - leaving goods in a tavern room while you scour the dungeon? I seem to recall one somehow, somewhere, but it's not in the Links to Wisdom. The ransacking of my party's lair by NPCs in the last session, albeit NPCs under the control of two of the players, brought this to mind. So here's my stab:

Roll d% first. The "happening" score is 1 if away up to 6 hours, 2 if away up to 12 hours, 3 if 24 hours, and +2 for each day thereafter (so 10 days is 23). You can also double or triple this number if in a particularly dangerous environment.

If the roll is equal to or lesser than the "happening" score then something may happen. Roll again on this table:


1-5: Your Biggest Fan, Stan: You have attracted an annoying would-be henchman to your doorstep, attracted by tales of your derring do. Negated if you have no reputation in the vicinity.
6-20: Amateur Thief, from outside inn. A light-fingered zero-level civilian passes by your room and can'r resist. Steals anything in view or in an obvious container, as long as it can be concealed in a pouch or tunic. Negated by: lock, watchdog, guard, vigilant innkeeper, concealment.
21-40: Amateur Thief, from inside inn. One of the fellow tenants gets a curious itch. Same as amateur thief, negated by lock, watchdog, guard, concealment, or if the party are the only tenants of the inn.
41-45 Inside Job. One of the employees of the inn has a similar idea. Negated by: lock (if party or innkeeper has key), watchdog, guard, vigilant innkeeper. Will look for concealed items, but not too hard.
46: Real Inside Job. The innkeeper is a crook. He/she schemes to rob the party but will set it up to look like a burglary, or will create a ruse to replace jewels with paste, good coin with counterfeit, magic items with ordinary and so on. This will happen over many inspections of the room, so that it will be difficult to conceal anything - especially with the keeper knowing the obvious hiding spots in his or her own establishment. Will try to get around watch animals or guards by ingratiation and bribery. Negated by: loyal guard, lock (if key is only with party).
47-50: Vandals. Anything from street urchins to wild baboons. They mostly want to destroy things but will run off with any coins that can easily be spent. Negated by: lock, watchdogs, guard, concealment, vigilant innkeeper.
51-60: Professional Thief. Take the maximum of (i) the "size category" of the settlement or road where the inn is located (where 1 is the loneliest village and 10 the hugest metropolis) and (ii) the party's highest level character. If that number or below was rolled on the "ones" die of the d% roll (60=10) the party has attracted a member of the thief class having character level equal to the number rolled. The thief will try climb, sneak, pick locks, disarm traps, drug or distract dogs, search for concealed goods, all at the appropriate skill level. He or she will, if successful, get away with the most portable and valuable of the party's goods. With this and all other thief results, play out the thief's assulat against the defenses.
61: Training Day: A first level apprentice thief backed up by a 11-16th level master. As above, but the master is able to intervene if anything happens to the apprentice.
62: Master Thief: If any member of the party is 5th level or above, an 11-16th level master thief comes calling. Very thorough and discerning in what gets taken away. May pay several visits to prepare the scene, create duplicates of magic items and jewelry, etc.
63: Larcenous Wizard: As 62, but a 3rd or higher level party attracts a 5-10th level magic-user gone rogue who knows all the right spells (spider climb, sleep, knock, you name it ...)
64-69: The Law: Agents of the local law enforcement, Inquisition, mages' guild or what have you demand to search the premises for contraband or black magic. If you locked the place, they bring crowbars and axes. If you have a dog, they'll bring five. Negated by: Being on good terms with local government, having no mysterious artifacts or unpaid taxes.
70: Crooked Law: As above, but a cop who bends the rules to declare your stuff illegal. Negated by: Good terms with local government.
71-77: Enemy Action, Larcenous: If you have any local enemies, they show up to steal stuff from your room (on 1d6, they have a thief on 4-5 and a magic user on 6). They will do a basic search, otherwise acting like a thief from the 51-60 result. Negated by: Not having any enemies.
78-80: Enemy Action, Devious: As above, except they are looking to plant stuff in your room, and then alert the law or other authorities. On an 80 the plan is truly devious and may involve sabotage of equipment or introduction of a malevolent being...
81-84: Enemy Action, Murderous: As 71-77 except they have broken into your place in order to ambush and kill you.
85-86: Mistaken Identity. Roll a d20 and add 64. The agents from that roll on this table are supposed to be targeting the room next door but chose yours by mistake or misdirection instead. Ignore if you are the only tenants of the inn.
87-92: Rodents. They have dug into your room and anything they can gnaw to in order to get to food, will be gnawed. Paper and leather are considered food by these rodents. Negated by: Very posh inn, cat in room.
93: Wererats. First they act like Rodents (above), then they turn into human form and act like thieves (51-60).
94: Wee Folk Tricksters. Leprechauns, brownies, jermlaine, mites, snyads, whatever. They'll go crazy setting up an elaborate practical joke on you, cruel or otherwise. Negated by: City or bigger settlement.
95: Smoke on the Water! The inn burns.
96: Rains and Flood! If your room is on the ground floor or top floor (in a cheap inn with a leaky roof), your goods take water damage.
97: Go Ape! If your room has a window, and you're in a city or metropolis, an escaped menagerie or circus animal enters and makes the place its home.
98: Profuse Apologies: A set of very important individuals (criminal gang if staying at a lowlife inn) has commandeered all rooms in the inn. Not to worry, though, the landlord has gathered all your visible belongings and is holding onto them, and offers a double refund of your night's stay. There is a problem if you have hidden anything in the room though...
99: Keep Out! The inn has been sealed off by the local authorities as a disease quarantine, crime scene, or just because the landlord is in debt. Your goods are under the watchful eye of the city guards for the indefinite future.
00: An Anonymous Gift: Oh, and here's something nice. A sack of gold, a magic item, a basket of fruit and bottle of wine. Just sitting there in your room, or in front of your room if it was secured. Honestly, it's not sabotaged ... not at all ...

Suggestions for additional entries that can be wedged in are welcome!

Trossley: The Inquisitors

Well, it's been a long hiatus for this blog and my campaign. The four of us were all getting set to play last night when disaster struck ... my wife came down with a headache and couldn't join the session.

I really don't like running a campaign with a player absent. None of the well-known solutions are satisfactory in a small party (running the PC as an NPC, rendering her temporarily infirm). Compounding the problem was the long break from the campaign. It would be a struggle to regain the bearings of this increasingly complicated plot even with all four of us around.

And then a crazy idea occurred to me. What would have happened in this run is that the party limps back to town, to find that a long-awaited event has come to pass. This is something I'd planned beforehand, only to see the party take the opportunity to adventure out of town.... the arrival of the Inquisitors of St. Damian and St. Hieracon. The party thought it would be a good idea to send for holy help, way back at the beginning of their adventure with the Dark Mother cultist at the millhouse. The sacred bureaucracy being what it is, it's taken a month or two for the response to come. Since then the players have had regrets ... yes, it's fair to say that the prospect of meeting these dreaded agents of orthodoxy  brings a shudder every time they're brought to mind.

So, two players, two inquisitors ... why not run a one-off game with those NPC's, whom I'd been already forming in my mind as Hildegarde, the heretic-hunting devotee of St. Hieracon, and Radigund, the demon-hunting devotee of St. Damian?

Now picture the left hand one with a war maul and plate armor.

Their levels were duly rolled up (5th level priest, 5th level militant), stats and equipment handed out including an impressive set of manacles, torture tools, and an iron stake loaded onto a patient mule. After receiving a briefing from the Sub-Hierarch of Utherton, who seemed more interested in the heresies and disrespect for the church shown in former years by the Mad Archmage than in the Dark Mother doings ... and having a chat with Joya, the mentor of the party's wizard, who showed exactly the opposite concerns ... the inquisitors were on their way to Trossley.

After taking inventory of the evilly tainted wood, which mostly still sat in the western square, our inquisitors found and interrogated the Busiacquo brother lumberjacks who had found the stand of "elven" trees. Much of the session they were trying to find ways to use their spells to exorcise the evil wood, but progress was slow. Our independent-minded ladies of the church refused lodging in an inn, choosing to take up residence in an empty house ... right next to the main party's house.

Recall that the main party had bought some crude furniture from Lucille the woodworker which turned out to have been made with the suspect wood. In the middle of the night, then, the inquisitors had to get up and contend with six rolling log chairs and an angry animated table. In the combat, a memorable fumble had Hildegarde's two-handed, blessed, illuminated war maul pulverize the head of a civilian who had rushed up to help with an axe. It's not really clear what the aftermath of this will be, but a disturbing postscript is that the main stockpile of logs had also rolled and banged around in the night.

This was a great setup for some memorable NPC's, and a good way to ease back into the plot, focusing on just one part of it. The players showed verve and class inhabiting their potential adversaries, making sure to impound everything they found in the main PC's home after the furniture had been smashed to splinters ... even to the point of destroying the hard-earned bedding made from the Mad Archmage's canvas tents. For being good sports and playing the Inquisition to the hilt, the two players' main PC's each earned 100 experience points.

Having players take a turn as higher-level NPCs is definitely not for every day or every campaign, but I judged it was what the campaign needed yesterday and it turned out to be the right call.

WTF, A Contest?

For those of you who don't mind the sympathetic mockery served up by Something Awful's WTF, D&D? feature, they are having a contest for the ultimate awesome old-school-style dungeon room and illustration. Thews, I can fairly say, will bulge.

I'm finding it hard to write my blog while on the road, but hopefully I should get a few more posts out this month, finishing up on the hit points series at least.