d4 hp magic-user

Fantastical Ahistorical Violence Previously Pseudo-pseudohistorical Violence   Right under the buzzer, I completed a new version and submitted it to the VIOLENCE IN JULY jam.   Features include: A tweaked version of Violence's combat rules Guidelines for injury effects Rules for healing injuries Three classes (Fighter, Magic-User, and Rogue) with six specializations each, giving background details, equipment, and/or special abilities. A bespoke system for Vancian magic, compatible with the spells from your favorite game with spell levels Check it out! It even includes cover art I collaged together in 20 minutes before going to a party:    Keep an eye out for revisions, additions, and expansions!

Caverns of Thracia and Evil Fantasy Cults If you’re going to be in my Caverns of Thracia game, don’t read this one! I finished reading Fight Club recently, which means the idea of cults and what makes them tic has been floating around in my brain. I am about to start running Caverns of Thracia over on Prismatic Wasteland ’s Discord server, so I decided to do some writing about one of the factions in that adventure. As written, there aren’t really any details on how the cult operates, and the only details we get on any NPC are their combat stats. Mostly, I wanted to answer the question of “why the hell do people join this cult and hang out in this dangerous as shit dungeon?” So here goes: Also, a short little disclaimer. In Caverns of Thracia, the Thracians are described as “tribesmen” who have degenerated into barbarity and shit. I think that is the sum total of the justification for the human sacrifice, just a “damn are those tribespeople savages? I’m going to go stab them n...

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence: Playtesting and Second Draft I finally took my rules for a spin! I summarized the events of the sessions below, or you can skip straight to my takeaways. Some of them have made it into my second draft of the rules, which are hosted on my google drive. Feel free to let me know what you think, especially if you actually playtest them! Session Recaps The first session was run with Ester, the court wizard , and Sir Caer, the knight. The dockmaster, a subordinate of their liege lord Sir Osric, offers them a bounty of 200gp to investigate sightings of crookhorns near Drumen Knoll. In preparation Ester memorizes shield twice and ignite/extinguish once. The overexertion leaves him exhausted, slowing his movement and inhibiting combat rolls, as well as leaving him with a chance of miscasting one of his shield spells. The pair wander around in the woods awhile, getting lost, avoiding a passing pair of people, and ending up right back at For Vulgar. ...

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Injuries (and Other Combat-Related Matters) Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page   Injury Guidelines I think there is real tension between the idea of letting injuries be diegetic and fit the scenario and having guidelines and procedures in place to reduce GM fiat. I am trying to thread that needle here; as long as DMs (me) keep in mind that these are guidelines, not hard and fast rules, I think things will work out. Injury Check: 1-6: flesh wound; no effect 7-10: light injury 11-12: medium injury 13-15: downed; medium injury 16-19: heavy injury 20+: mortal injury Hit location (d12) 1: head 2: right leg 3: left leg 4-5: dominant arm 6-7: non-dominant arm 8-12: torso For hit location, use the melee die that the character used. If a character wins a melee roll by 2 or more (complete victory), then they can choose to force the opponent to use the result of either their own melee die or the opponent’s. Injury Sever...

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Bestiary Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page   Armour: The type of armour the beast is considered to have for the purposes of injury checks. Shooting: bonuses or penalties when attempting to shoot at the beast. Melee: the dice the beast rolls in melee, as well as what weapon to treat it as for length and injury checks. Harm: the dice the beast rolls when doing an injury check. If no specific table is given, assume it is the standard injury check (1-6 flesh wound; 7-12 injury; 13+ down). Below I have created a handful of template monsters. In the style of “Just Use Bears”, I figure that at least for now this is good enough. Some monsters might have specific injuries they always cause, or specific types of weapons they are resistant to. (e.g. a skeleton has a +4 on injury checks against pierce and +2 against slash.) I trust myself to wing those things at the table, at least for now. Templates “Bears” Actual bears, but also other ...

Walking Dead Braunstein/Cataphract-Like A cool idea I had:     Rather important readings: Sam Sorensen's Cataphract Design Diary Mythic Mountain Musing's Traveller Braunstein  

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Logistics Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page   I am hoping to actually bring these rules to the table soon, so I am going to be getting into some of the more nitty-gritty and logistical aspects of running the game. My original version of this post got overwritten on accident. I think I put everything back in though… Encumbrance You have two hands! 4 belt slots (His Majesty the Worm Style): these are the items you can access much more quickly. Light armour occupies one of these slots, medium two, and heavy three. For additional carrying capacity, you have a few options. For a pack, you can either have a Satchel: 4 slots Backpack: 8 slots; encumbering and if that just isn't enough, you can use Small sack: 4 slots, occupies a hand. Large sack: 12 slots, occupies both hands; encumbering. Edit: Originally large sacks were 8 slots, but Phlox of Whose Measure God Could Not Take pointed out that made it strictly worse tha...

Alternative Holy Magic for Dolmenwood's Pluritine Church  Prelude  I swear this isn’t supposed to be a Luke Gearing fan blog. Also, this is at least nominally related to pseudo-pseudohistorical violence so I can pretend I am making progress on a current project instead of starting a new one. Basically required reading: Luke Gearing's Grand Unified Theory of Magic and Religion  Very highly suggested reading: Elmcat's Kill Clerics Become Warlocks  Dododecahedron's Classless Clerics  I found all three of these blog posts incredibly inspiring in the matter of “fixing” clerics. I have never been satisfied with the way clerics work as a class—much has been written about this, especially in posts from Prismatic Wastelands’s Cleric Blog Bandwagon—but invoking the power of a deity should not work the same as a wizard casts spells.  I am also just a sucker for bespoke and unique magic systems, I think having bespoke forms of supernatural powers can really make magic ...

   Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence: Character Creation Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page   This is part of my ongoing project to flesh out Luke Gearing's Pseudohistorical Violence for a home game. I thought about doing completely random character generation, but I decided instead to let players pick a class and then roll a d4 for a random boon. Some of the classes are incomplete, so either stay tuned or make your own I guess :) All characters start with some adventuring gear and 3d6 gold pieces.  (I would use the quick equipment table from OSE Carcass Crawler #something or other) . Also I reference Dolmenwood a lot because I think I'm going to use this weird funky system in the Dolmenwood setting because I like it. Kill two birds with one stone you know?  In addition to this, each player should get one non-adventuring skill related to a previous profession or something, mostly because I want to roll on the big d100 table from DCC. Knight You are some...

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page    Bending the laws of the universe is not easy! Unless this is very poorly balanced. SPELL DIFICULTY: DC EASY: 6 HARD: 10  Easy spells take 4 hours to memorize. Medium spells take a full 8 hour day to memorize. Hard spells take a week of study to memorize.  I quite like the idea of very powerful magic users having to retreat to their towers to study for long periods of time to have their most powerful spells prepared. I don't like it when the standard dnd stile magic user can rest overnight, spend a quick hour skimming their spellbook, and have upwards of 10 spells memorized. Roll 1d12 + modifiers: 2 or more above DC: Memorized! Take 1 fatigue Within 1 of DC: Memorized, but take 2 fatigue 2-3 Below DC: take 2 fatigue, spell may fizzle/misfire 4 or more below DC: take 2 fatigue spell likely fizzles/misfires (roll misfire table twice and take the worse result)  Drained counts as an injury, granting +2 to further injury...

Pseudo-Pseudohistorical Violence Master Page Consider this my "fantasy heartbreaker"  Credits to Luke Gearing's "Violence" and "Violence at the Street Level", found here:  https://lukegearing.blot.im/violence https://lukegearing.blot.im/violence-at-the-street-level   Edit: Luke Gearing seems to have removed the "pseudo-historical" part of the Violence rules on his blog. Thanks internet archive for allowing me to link to  a version of the post that still has the pseudohistorical part.   I really like d12's so I was very happy to see Violence even just based on that. I also really enjoy that "Violence at the Street Level" makes weapon length a very explicit factor in combat, as that is something my (amateur) historical combat nerd friend talks about whenever I complain about my dissatisfaction with standard dnd style combat (variable weapon damage, HP never making any sense , etc.) I'm hoping to test these rules sometime in th...