In case you don’t know why I am in love with this program, let me take a few moments to tell you. First, I love character creation. I love, if only for a few moments, building the back story and personality of a new character. For a long time, I used to have to build these characters by hand and it would take hours per character with two or three books laying about me. Now it just takes my laptop and about twenty minutes. This has been a huge time saver when making opponent forces for our regular gaming group.

That is another of the wonders of this program. I paid the extra $15 to add the entire Pathfinder Bestiary to my Core Rules (which come with the purchase of the software). So I can now customize almost any creature that I want. I can add hit dice, templates and class levels to whatever creature I would like. So, when the players run into a bearded devil (handily identified by the cleric), they might expect it to have a bleeding attack and that weird beard thing, but they probably wouldn’t expect it to also have a couple of barbarian levels complete with rage abilities. I love the diversity that it allows me to throw at the players, which keeps them on their toes.

I can then take these newly modified monsters and output their created data in lots of useful formats. Obviously there is its own format, but it can easily be saved in XML to be edited later. You can also output the character data as plain text, BBCode, html or WikiText. This format ends up being identical to the format used in the Pathfinder Bestiary. This is super useful if I am running custom bad guys alongside stock monsters.

There is some functionality that I have not attempted to utilize yet. According to the fine folks at Lone Wolf, I can edit pretty much anything in the software to reflect our houserules. For example, at our table we give fighters 4+Int skills per level, rather than 2+Int, and we give extra iterative attacks one point of BAB early. I could go in and make these changes to my software so that it can reflect our table’s preferences. It also is supposed to allow me to custom create classes and creatures. I’ve not needed to do any of that yet, but I like that it is available. However, having not done any of this, I cannot say whether this is a simple and clean process or a cludgy and complex one.

Lastly, Lone Wolf is continually expanding the software and doing so without charging an arm and a leg. At least in my opinion, the software and expansions are very reasonably priced and very simple to acquire. Looking at the post over in Paizo’s forum, you can see what their future plans are for Hero Lab.

In short, I really like this program and I know that it has really enhanced my gaming experience. I don’t have any ties to Lone Wolf or Hero Lab other than being a now loyal customer. You can download and purchase Hero Lab here.

Via io9.

I have spent my time here in Eregant trying to put together the pieces of my now shattered life.  I have been struck blind and, for the first time in my memory, am having to relate my soul to another.  Her name is Daidra and she has become my window back into the world.  Before I can tell that story, I must tell another.

Nearly two hundred years ago, before the invasion of Nagul, two vile peoples met.  Far to the east in the nation of Kami, the great oni peoples took to battle against the bronze elves of Murmanityed.  A heated war raged between the two nations, though over what issue or offense my texts have been unclear.  The Kami were successful in driving the invaders out but not before the elves could strike them at their very core.

The Kami are a very mystical people and do not worship the gods of the west.  Instead they offer their fealty and sacrifices to powerful beings who choose to manifest themselves on this plane as totems and artifacts.  Each city and village has a guardian totem, as does each noble house.  The Murmanityedi knew this and knew the devotion that the people had for them, so they captured one of these spirits to take as a ransom.

They meant it as an effort to turn the invasion back in their favor.  Their clever plan might have worked had the elven couriers arrived to deliver the ransom demands.  Again the records are unclear but the envoy never arrived at the oni general’s camp so the Kami never received the Murmanityedi demands.  What likely would have halted the war enraged it further.  Both sides believed the other barbaric and cowardly and any hope of negotiation and respectable war was lost.

The Kami were able to drive Murmanityed from their lands but the invaders took with them their prize.  I have reasoned that the artifact, a large book, knew what it was doing and allowed itself to be kidnapped.  What happened to this book over the next several decades is a mystery, though I believe the spirit known as Visvatman to have waited quietly, biding his time.  He waited in ambush like a venomous snake.

Visvatman knew that the bronze elves would not worship it but try to wield him as their tool, so he chose not to reveal his power to them.  He made himself as innocuous as possible and was soon relegated to a storeroom in the back of a palace among the other forgotten spoils of war.  For seventy years he plotted in the darkness waiting for a receptive people to liberate it.

These people were the Barlozians.  They stormed the Murmanityed palace and looted its coffers.  Wagons of treasure were hauled back to Perdaith to be sorted and apportioned.  Visvatman saw this as his opportunity to begin his work and brought itself out of hiding.   The archmagis of Barloz saw the raw potential of this artifact but, not knowing its origin or history, he decided that he would have the book copied and studied.  This isn’t exactly what the book had intended.  He could not exert his power through duplicates but he could not erase its contents or he would lose his attachment to this plane.  He could however rearrange its contents obfuscating his true nature and purpose.  The wizards of Barlox, he decided, were too strong of will to fall prey to his charms.  He was also now in a foreign land and needed time to learn the people so that he could discover their wants and desires, their hidden dreams.

The artifact had become known as The Book of Dark Knowledge, as were all of the copies, since it was found among the peoples of the dark tongue.  Copies of the Book were distributed to all of the colleges throughout Barloz to see what new wonders could be extracted from them.  The great thinkers of the country took to pouring over them hoping to unlock the cipher.

Over the next decade wondrous new things were created, the greatest of which were the Crossway Gates, the portals that link the western nations.  Inherent in the very nature of the spirit were the ideas of travel.  Even hidden and obscured, the ability to teleport was written on every page.  Hundreds of other magicks were extracted from its pages but none were as impactful as the Crossway Gates.

The Barlozian king Greco ordered that the original tome be locked away in his vault, to protect it, and that only the copies would be read and distributed.  This angered Visvatman.  He did not want to wait anymore.  Eighty years had passed and he could feel his power slipping away.  He drew up as much power as he could covertly muster to alter his path.  He charmed fate and he was misfiled and another tome was placed in the vault.  He knew not where he would go, only that he would remain free.

The book floated around Barloz for nearly the next half century.  It exchanged hands a dozen times and Visvatman took what power he could from them, but he found them either too dim for his purposes or too set in their ways to be swayed.  The book spent much time in Bardoon before being transported to the temple of Mishya in Mercan.  They had just received a new priest in charge of their archives and he had asked for new texts to be brought in from around the kingdoms.  This priest was me and this is where my story intersects with his.

I was a young man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge but I didn’t have the wisdom to temper it.  The original Book of Dark Knowledge disguised as a copy arrived at my temple and I was immediately drawn to it.  I was the perfect target, though he calls me his protegé.  I was intelligent enough to understand his plans an uncommitted enough to my faith to carry them out.  It pains me to dictate these words, but they are truth.

I have already related the story of my early experiences with the book and the eventual expulsion from my temple, so I will not recount them here.  Just know that none of those events happened without the will of Visvatman having some hand in them.  My adoration of him had given him strength – as my fear of him now does.  Even though I know his true purposes and I feel that I have become his prisoner, parts of me still follow him willingly.  I fear that I am being lead to the slaughter but I continue to follow anyway.

As to how I know my captor’s true intentions, I am now able to tell that story.

While exploring the library here in Eregant with Crebain, a voice came to me.  It introduced itself as Visvatman, a name I had not yet learned.  The voice had a familiar quality to it while being still being entirely alien.  The voice explained that it was the spirit of the book that I carried with me and that it was revealing itself to me because I had passed his tests.  He said that I had seen past his shifting words and through his devious charms.  He claimed to be pleased with me and wished to offer me a “boon”.  He offered to return my mother to me.

I had known my mother only through stories from my father and what vestiges of her had been passed on to my sister.  I knew her to be a quiet, graceful woman who was strong of heart and mind.  Before the final years of his life, my father would often wax poetic about his “sweet Mira”.  In his last year, she had become an obsession for him.  Because she had died giving birth to my sister and me, I never knew her personally but I still loved her dearly.  Often I would sit and wonder wistfully about what she was really like.  I knew that, because she had died a natural death and that nothing now remained of her, I would only be afforded this opportunity if we were to end up in the same afterlife.

My book offered me the ability to change that.  He promised that I would be able to see her again and that I could even speak to her.  He promised that I could do so whenever I wanted and he promised me that I would not be harmed.  I knew Visvatman to be powerful and capable of things nothing else I knew could do.  I probed and questioned him and, as far as I was capable, I deemed him to be dealing with me truthfully.  I have since discovered that his truth was not free of deception.  He had been truthful to me because he knew the explicit assumptions I would make and the questions I would never ask.  I have long suspected that I would find my final destination to be one of the hellish afterlives but never had I considered that she would.

My father had told me how my mother had been a follower of the war gods.  She was of the house of the great general Salawin and his family would follow them.  It seems, however, that Ulmira had a darker side.  She had a quick and calculating mind and loved puzzles and mysteries.  This lead her to begin to dabble in the realm of Hylarr.  The goddess specializes in the greatest puzzle of all, a puzzle in which the pieces are actively resisting being put in their places.  At first it was just a small trick here and a harmless deception there and soon she became hooked, trying to make more intricate and complex plots and increasingly dangerous scenarios.  Her capture by the Jarls and rescue by my father were a result of one of her plots.  Her entire marriage to my father, it seems, was a failed ploy to manipulate the entire royal house of Aligindel.  She had become a secret high priestess of the goddess of the moon during this time.  Olwyrd herself had promised my mother that the greatest manipulation of the age would be hers.

My mother was told that her death would come with the birth of her children and that her death would drive her husband mad.  She was told that his madness would cause the destruction of Firforge and would open Barloz to invasion from the east.  This invasion would destabilize the nation and the aid offered by Spaartha and Aruthien would result in the division of Barloz between the two liberators.  The former Barlozians would eventually rebel against their occupiers and that would further destabilize the western kingdoms.  Olwyrd promised her that the far reaching effects of the plan were beyond understanding but that she would be the lynch pin to it all; she could die knowing that her actions would manipulate entire nations.

With this, my mother’s fate was sealed.  I now know her fate firsthand because Visvatman brought her to me.  Or rather, he brought me to her.  For the last thirty and more years she has dwelt in the realm of Hylarr.  Though I had hoped that she would be able to return with me, I knew that it could not be so, but I had not prepared myself for what I would experience.  I do not think any mortal is capable of preparing themselves.  My sight became filled with blackness and then with a confusing landscape of wonder and despair.  It was still and littered with soft pinpricks of light.  All around me I could hear the rasped breathing of the insane.

I was brought to my mother.  She lay curled on a stone whimpering, long dry of tears.  She was surrounded by comforts and riches that would be the envy of any living person but she would have none of them.  She would not even touch the food offered her even though she was gaunt with starvation.  I tested the cushions and they were soft and warm.  I sampled the food and it was delicious and filling.  I tried to comfort my mother as she murmured to herself but she could not be consoled.  She kept reminding herself that these pleasures around her were not real, that they were another trick.  She refused my aid and raved at me calling me a “spectre” and a “ghost” and telling me that I was not going to fool her again.

That was when I knew.  She had tried all her life to manipulate others into being her pawns and now she was doomed to a life where she was so paranoid that others will do the same to her that she refuses even the truth and goodness offered to her.  I was awash with more pity and anguish for her than I had ever felt for any being in the whole of existence.  I wanted to leave and I bid Visvatman take me home.  But he would not.

Rather, he revealed to me that I could not leave by any effort of my own.  I had accepted his “gift” and he would release me whenever he saw fit.  Even now my eyes are filled with the plush prison my mother had locked herself into.  I thank Mishya that my ears no longer have to suffer my mother’s sobs while I stood impotent to help.

I began by stating that I knew Visvatman’s purposes for me.  He tires of his parchment cage and has fought from himself a new host.  When he arrived in the west a century ago he realized that we held no respect for objects but praised only their makers.  He now intends to break  me down , hollow me out, to make me an acceptable vessel for him.  He has given me full knowledge of this because he knows that I can do nothing about it.  No mortal can cure me of this living hell and it is only a matter of time before it eats away my soul.  I know that even death is not an escape because I know that a fate worse than Ulmira’s awaits me.

I write, or rather dictate, knowing full well that my only hope is oblivion and Visvatman has promised that to me.  It is a sad day when the thought of oblivion warms your heart.

-M.E. via Daidra Iascaire

It’s a bit over the top, but it does give you a sense of what real medieval combat would have looked like.

If you come across someone swinging one of these, you want to be sure that you have either a high dex bonus, or are wearing some serious armor.

As you might already be aware, full-casters are generally much more powerful than non-casters and druids are pretty solidly powerful, even among full-casters.  Pathfinder has done well (in my opinion) of powering down druids, but one-on-one, a druid is still more powerful than an evenly leveled fighter.  The animal companion plus summoning spells make them a more than formidable adversary.  So why bother with fighters when you can just raise armies of druids (and clerics and wizards)?

Our first problem when answering this question is that, in Pathfinder, your basic NPCs are given the stat array 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 with no mention of how those stats should be best arranged.  With this we concluded that it is more-or-less evenly distributed, with one in six people having any particular stat be that 13.   Since a 13 wisdom will let you cast 3rd level spells as a druid or cleric, wouldn’t 16% of the population be prime candidates for militarized divine spellcasting? And another 16% primed to be wizards?

The second problem we run into is that we have no built in controls on how common the various heroic PC classes are.  The rules make vague statements that most people fall into one of the NPC classes (commoner, warrior, expert, aristocrat and adept) but there is no hard and fast rule saying that they can’t be of heroic PC classes.  Gone are the 1e days of stat requirements to play classes (17 charisma to be a paladin, anyone?) so why not take a level in ranger or barbarian or fighter instead of warrior?  Why not take cleric levels instead of  adept?  What makes the NPCs take NPC classes?

This kind of thinking leads toward an end that we, as our gaming group, do not desire: the Tippyverse.  If you frequent the Giant in the Playground message boards, you may have heard of the DnD universe created by the poster Emperor Tippy.  For those of you who haven’t heard, this thread explains it relatively well.  Basically it is a world were RAW is Law and the logical extensions of a world wherein magic exists and costs nothing but time and coin are explored.  It’s a magocracy to the Nth degree.  Our group does not want this.  So how do we fix it?

My first solution to this conundrum was to decide that the stat arrays were not evenly distributed.  In a pseudo-medieval society, your basic person is going to be best served by a high constitution.  Yes in a magical setting, clerics, bards, druids and adepts exist and can cast curative spells, but they aren’t around all the time and not every midwife has levels in them.  People die from injury and disease.  Those who have that 8 in constitution are much more likely to die than the ones with their 13 there.  Secondly, because every street corner doesn’t have a wizard on it offering to solve your problems with a few arcane spells, manual labor still needs to be done.  Fields need to be plowed; tools need to be made; things need to be lifted and carried; a decent strength score is probably well prized among the common folk.  Essentially, natural selection has made it such that the stat arras are skewed towards the physical stats rather than the mental ones.

The second solution that I arrived on (which still is contended by Wolfgod) is that the PC classes are just less common.  My reasoning is that, even though as players we think, “I want to be a cleric” or “I’d like to play a barbarian this time”, the people in the world don’t make that conscious decision.  They simply do stuff and then their actions are translated into classes, feats, skills and such as best modeled by the rules.  The rules of the game, as I see them, are like the laws of physics in our world.  Physics does not force an object to fall when I drop it.  Physics describes how the object fell and can help me predict what other falling objects will do based on centuries of data.  In the same way, being a fighter or cleric or druid was not a conscious decision by the character, but rather a reflection of the decisions that he made in his life.  With this outlook in mind, the NPC classes are just easier to fall into.  It’s easier for your average soldier to have made decisions that made him a warrior instead of a fighter or for your skillful NPC to be an expert rather than a rogue.  My basic viewpoint is that not all priests are clerics and not all soldiers are fighters.  Most are NPCs and a select few are specialized PC classes.

With these two constraints in mind, we have gone to building the various armies.  We are still hammering out the finer points and balance issues, but our basic conclusion was that the vast majority of an army needs to be made up of rank-and-file guys with spears (or swords or whatever) and that spell slingers are a small minority.  We are setting a fluid limit of no more than 5-10% of your force can be casters and I would eventually like to see a rule that states how many of your infantry need to be warriors instead of fighters/rangers/barbarians/paladins.

If you have any comments or advice on how best to achieve our desired low-medium magic world, I’d love to hear them.  We are always looking to make our world fit our vision for it and would like to have reasons why it has developed and remained that way.

Prince Edelbrock, one of my frequent traveling companions, had asked us to return to his homeland with him so that he might deal with his father.  The people of Mastillan revere nature rather than the gods and it seems that having a son who is a Chosen of Mishya was somehow an shame for King Tharbrek.  Even an embarrassing son, it seems, will be called home in a time of dire need.  There was great trouble within the king’s borders and he wanted his son home to deal with it.

Our companions assembled east in the nation of Hold Dane where we picked up two new companions, a barbaric warrior and a paladin of Cheleria.  They, along with our normal troupe, continued westward to the city of Sark.  En route we are ambushed by a band of minotaur.  They seemed to be waiting for us and had hidden themselves in a herd of aurochs.  The battle was as protracted as I have seen with this group.  This was not because of any failing on my part or any of my companions, but due to the sheer number of the beasts.

When the last monster fell, we patched ourselves up and soldiered onward.  We arrived at our destination for the night and decided to purchase rooms at the inn.  While it was after dark, we decided that we should have a nicely cooked meal on real plates with a decent wine.  The rangers may know well how to catch and dress game, but their skills as cooks leaves much to be desired.  As we sat and waited for our food, two young footpads approached.  Foolhardy, they tried to lift the purses of two of my companions.

It had been a long day and I was in no mood to any more drama.  As the inn was inside the hollow of a great tree and we were well within druid territory, I thought it appropriate to bring the tree to life and simply hold everyone in place.  One of the two cutpurses was held fast but the other managed to escape into the cellar.  He was soon rooted out and the purses returned.  He also had on him an item of great worth: a ring which can turn its wearer invisible.  Rath excised it from him as punishment.  He also, in an effort to re-educate the wayward lads, took them to a priest to have them atoned.

The next day we set out for and arrived at the capitol city of Gilifar.  We were met by the king and portions of the druid council.  The offered us hospitality – at least to those who would declare their heritage.  This is a common custom in Mastillan, but one that I find very invasive.  Not one to speak falsely but not being willing to reveal my secret, I remained silent.  They rest of my companions, however, chose to introduce themselves properly.  It was then vaguely explained to us the problem facing the king.  I do not believe the explanation went how King Tharbrek expected.

In Mastillan there is a secret mine, guarded by a secret sect of druids.  Its location is known but to a few.  In this mine are incredible veins of adamantine, the mining of which is strictly regulated.  Metal, however, is not all that this mine contains, it seems.  Recently, fiendish creatures and bands of minotaur have been assaulting out of the cavern entrance and it had to be sealed.  The king wished us to investigate for him.  This, however, is when contention began.  They wanted us to go and clear the mine for them but they would not trust us to know where the mine was actually located.  This greatly upset Rath and Alder.  After many cross words, we finally agreed to the king’s restrictions and prepared to enter the cave on the next day.

We were teleported to the entrance of the cavern where we were met by a trio of druids, one of them a firbolg.  She removed the great stone blocking the mouth of the cave complex and a rope was lowered to the cavern floor.  Against my own protests, I was convinced to not simply fly down but to reserve my magical energies and climb the rope.  I was predictably and unceremoniously dumped onto the pile of rubble beneath the entrance when my grip gave out.  The group stifled their laughter, less for my benefit and more to keep any nearby creatures who might intend us harm from being given more warning than necessary of our arrival.

It didn’t take long until we found just such creatures.  A pack of minotaur were patrolling near the entrance but were somehow unaware of our presence.  Using his recently gained invisibility ring, Rath snuck up on the group while the rest of us hung back.  When the time seemed right, we launched our attack.  However, the situation we thought to our advantage turned out to be a trap.  As two of our member rushed across a thin natural bridge over a swift moving subterranean river, one of the beasts activated a device which dropped the bridge with my two friends in the icy water.  The pack of beasts quickly split to flank our bewildered party.

Knowing that I stood no chance against these massive, axe-wielding monsters, I quickly took to the air and offered my support from over the center of the cavern pool.  Having lost our tactical advantage, the minotaur were beginning to harry my companions.  The tense battle raged for what seemed like hours though I know it to have been less than minutes.  Our group was able to triumph in the end, but not without taking several brutal wounds.  Trapped in the cave now, we began our search for somewhere that would be a defensible place to rest.

We were able to find a small alcove in the cave, with only two small entrances.  It would be many hours before Athelas could perform his rituals to regain his blessings from Athor, his god.  In the mean time, Rath and Miach, two of the King’s Rangers from Aruthien, scouted the immediate vicinity.  I had found enough to spark my interest right there in our alcove.  The walls had been covered in ancient carvings.  The language was some hybrid of the Dark Tongue of so many of the vile residents of this world and Arcane Naduumian, the language of the ancient vile peoples of this world.  I already knew that this cave would hold no good news but this brought a true sense of foreboding to me.

We spent the night (if such a distinction can be made in this sunless world) in an extradimensional space provided by the wizardess Holly.  In the morning, with much caution, we ventured deeper into the cavern system.  It was not long until the natural rock of the cave began to turn into worked stone.  I had read myths of an ancient civilization lost in this area before the current peoples had settled here.  It seem that those legends contained at least a thread of truth.  We had stumbled onto an underground city the seemed more than abandoned.  It seemed picked clean.

Immediately on our guard, we progressed forward into the narrow and labyrinthine ruined city.  We cautiously peered around every corner before continuing, expecting something to jump out at us.  Our fears were soon confirmed.  The ancient city’s walls were pocked with small holes, about the size of a child’s head.  Inside each one was something much more sinister than a child.  The former residents of this city had not truly left so much as they had devolved.  What were once brilliant architects and engineers were now savage morlocks waiting in ambush for their next meal.  A small group attacked us as we entered the town square.  They were quickly dispatched.  Knowing that there would be more of them, Holly devised a plan to lure them out.

She conjured an illusion of a cat and sent it walking down the street we had to follow next.  Every starving morlock burst forth from their holes along the ruined street trying futilely to capture the illusory feline.  Holly them smote them all with a searing bolt of lightning.  The warriors mopped up the few survivors as they tried to flee for their lives.  I felt pity for the creatures.  Hunger and darkness had driven them mad, not evil.  But in the world that I keep being drawn into, it seems to be kill or be killed.  Morality and compassion seem to have little place.  Even our priest of Athor, a deity of pure goodness and light, takes no qualm in bringing these creatures low.

The city was well suited for its morlock inhabitants but was less so for us surface dwellers.  It took us some time to navigate our way through the crumbling streets.  Our previous actions seemed to have warned off any further ambushes.  Leaving the city lead us to the mine proper.  We had come upon an old elevator and the remnants of the mining camps.  Rotted wood and rusted tools were not all we found though.  Ominous noises from the shaft greeted us too.  Again we prepared ourselves for battle.

Up from the elevator shaft crawled two huge minotaur, larger than any I had yet seen.  Prepared, the steel of my companions tore into their thick hides.  Not a moment after the initial clash, a fell beast flew up out of the abyss below.  It seems that whatever was afoul in these mines had to deal with the infernal.  A minotaur, corrupted by the lower planes,  took flight in the lofty cavern.  His bruisers on the ground kept us busy while he harried us from the sky.  He slung his foul magicks at us and I did my best to counter him.  Bringing his guards low, we were able to wound him enough to force him into a retreat.  I knew then that this would not be the last we’d see of him.

We ventured further down into the mine.  I had learned from my previous attempts at manually scaling rock faces and chose to ensure my safety with a little magic.  The mine shaft brought us into an even more magnificent cavern than the ones before.  The ceiling was carpeted with a luminous fungus that gave the whole chamber an otherwordly blue-green glow.  The cavern was also lined with raised platforms where some unknown agriculturalist was raising mushrooms and mosses.  While I stood in wonder at the glory of the vault, our more pragmatic ranger scouted ahead.

He returned when he had encountered something that he could not identify.  As soon as I stopped looking and began to listen, my blood turned.  I heard the maddening cackle of a gibbering beast.  I had read tales of spelunkers happening upon these quivering masses and being driven insane by them.  Knowing that I preferred to retain my full faculties – though I wonder about some of my companions – and that our mission was crucial enough to warrant their mental safety, I encouraged my companions to make haste and leave the chamber before the aberrant beast was upon us.

We fled into an elevated room and, due to its use and its markings, we knew it near our final destination.  Peering over the ledge with rimmed the access to the lower level, we saw several figures but more ominously we saw a nearly completed gate.  To which plane this gate lead, I am uncertain but I would stake my soul that it was not to the realms of the generous gods.  Our archer began picking away at the stone with his adamantium tipped arrows, gouging out days of their nefarious progress.  This, predictably, incited them and we steeled ourselves once more for combat.

Fire burst forth from the opening, burning all who were nearby.  Moments later another.  All who had missiles returned fire and then drew swords as beasts began lumbering from the darkness.  A half dozen minotaur  emerged and combat was quickly engaged.  Three of the lot had been tainted by the infernal contact and took to the air on great leathery wings.  With great effort and only through working in concert we were able to bring down each of the fiends.  Brutally wounded, we knew that the war was not over.  We had not but a moment to catch our breath when a dark robed bronze elf rose up out of the gap in the floor.

Whoever he was, he was powerful.  None of us could resist his spells, nor could we penetrate his.  Though I hold very little stock in it, I do believe that it was luck the victory that dark day.  One of Miach’s arrows struck home and sent the wizard plummeting a dozen fathoms to the stone below.  We held for some time, unsure of what else was lurking, waiting for us to drop our guard.

When enough time had passed, Rath, Braden and I descended into the lowest cavern to remove all the work these monstrous beasts had wrought.  The rogue Braden also helped himself to several ingots of adamantine ore.  With things cleared and returned to as normal as a morlock-infested minotaur den can be, we returned to the surface to inform the druid council of the situation beneath their feet.

When we surfaced, we were greeted by Edelbrock and a firbolg druid who escorted us back to the palace.  Obviously the Favored of Mishya had settled things with the worshipers of Seiba’s hand.  Tharbrek and his council were grateful for our assistance and seem to take take grave our warning.  Their borders would not long be safe.  The cavern dwellers were in league with the bronze elves and with Manath.  It would not be long before the emperor made another move.

The king rewarded each of us with a nation’s worth in refined adamantium and offered each of us honorary positions int he Mastillan military.  Fully half of our members accepted the mark of the auroch.  I was among those who declined.  I am not a military man and I do not believe I will ever become used to the bloodshed that is so commonplace to the others.

From Mastillan we each parted and went our separate ways.  I remained with the druids for a few more days.  I had learned that the druids had the ability to open the eyes and minds of animals, giving them the wits of any humanoid.  I have had with me, ever since that fateful day in Mercan, a raven.  The bird was not magically compelled to me or in any way magically attached like a familiar is to an arcanist.  I had named him Crebain and taught him my mother’s tongue.  He had been such a good friend to me, filling my dark and sullen life with a modicum of joy.

I meant to give him a gift.  A selfish gift, I’ll admit, but a gift nonetheless.  I asked one of the druids to teach me how to awaken my friend and , after several days, I was finally successful.  Crebain explains that his mind was suddenly unclouded and he was able to understand and connect things like never before.  The way that I understand it is almost as if a great sobriety had come over him, a sobriety that had always existed in him that he was only now able to access.

I have not been in Eregant but a day and my avian friend is pestering me to take him to the libraries.  On the voyage over, I was able to teach him the basics of several of my most commonly used languages.  As we had exhausted the written resources I carried with me, he wants to go and practice with new material.  I am nearly as eager to explore their archives.  The excitement and freshness of my companion has renewed my vigor.  I envision great things for my time here and for Crebain’s future.

-M.E.

I made a couple of assumptions about the various characters involved. The baseline character was a level 5 commoner with all 10s in his stats. It doesn’t matter what his profession is (farmer, baker, librarian, sailor, etc.), he’s just a basic laborer. With two skill points in Profession(X), your average worker can earn 9 gold a week, which is 468 gold over the course of a year. Subtracting the price of a loaf of bread a day, two hunks of meat and two hunks of cheese a week, Average Joe nets 116 gold a year. This will buy him a masterwork tool and a new set of clothes every year with a couple of coins left over for a pint or two a week to forget the fact that he’s a commoner.

Next we’ll take a look at your average performer. In a decent sized city, a street performer who has specialized in his trade (full ranks, skill focus, masterwork item and a +2 CHA) can command a +15 to his skill check at level 5. This nets him 3.5 gold per day, 1278 gold per year (assuming he works every single day). Dropping 100 gold on a masterwork performing item, he can afford a “good” meal and a pitcher of wine every day and still have 922 gold to buy himself a villa with.

Now let’s take a look at a blacksmith. I am assuming here that our master craftsman is able to sell every item he makes. Also, since he could make any of the dozens of weapons or armors, I’m going to give an average weaponsmith and an average armorsmith. Your “average” weapons costs 32.5 gold (and is a martial weapon) and your average armor costs 259 gold. The “average” weapon nets the weaponsmith 21.6 gold per unit. He can make 2 units per week with his +15 to crafting (and using the accelerated crafting DC). Your average skilled weaponsmith can net himself 2246 gold per year. The “average” armor nets the armorsmith 172.6 gold per suit. It takes him 2.7 weeks to create a suit and, since the crafting rules are based on one check per week, this means he can make 17 suits a year. With this your average skilled armorsmith can net himself 2934 gold per year. He does pretty well for himself.

If we take a look at your average alchemist (with the same skill bonus as the blacksmith), his typical fare costs 31.8 gold, which nets him 21.2 gold per item. He can make two alchemical items per week, just like the weaponsmith, which garners him 2204.8 gold per year. He does have to buy a 200 gold alchemist lab to do this, so he’s slightly worse off than the blacksmiths, who only have to spend 100 gold for their specialty items.

Now, we have the weird one. The guys who make the random gear that fills up the rest of the equipment table, like ladders and nails and cloth bags. Since I don’t want to have to divide each of those various categories up into their component craft skills (leather, wood, fabric, glass, pottery, etc.) I’m just going to find an average sundry item and assume the maker has the appropriate skill, feat and item. Since these are relatively more common folk, I’m only giving them a +1 INT, which nets them a +14 to their skill. The average sundry item costs 41.3 gold (since spy glasses and water clocks are so expensive) which nets the crafter 27.5 gold per item. Since he can make one item per week (actually, one every 4 days but the craft rules are weird), your general crafter makes 1430 gold per year. This puts him slightly above your common laborer.

Incidentally, an apprentice to any of the various crafters (who, by RAW, has no ranks in a craft skill) only makes 36.5 gold per year. He had better be juggling on the weekends if he wants to survive.

Now,  before you say that level 5 is pretty high for a commoner, I did the math for a level 2 farmer. He earns 416 gold per year.

The numbers for the crafters would change considerably, since their craft bonus would drop from a +15 to a +12 and, with average rolls, put them out of range of accelerated crafting.

If you go with crafting by the day instead of by the week, our level 2 weaponsmith can make a weapon every 5 days. This earns him 1554.9 gold per year, assuming he sells all his weapons. Let’s say he has a military contract in a martial state. If you don’t allow crafting by the day, he can make one weapon a week, which cuts his potential income down to 1107.6 gold per year.

As for our armorsmith, at level 2, it takes him 5.2 weeks to make a suit of armor. If you allow crafting by the day, this lets him make 10 suits of armor per year and a potential income of 1726 gold. If he crafts by the week, he can make 8 suits per year, which 1380.8 gold per year. Both still set him well above the commoner and his “profession” skill.

Our alchemist was already unable to do accelerated crafting, so he’s not as bad off. He still makes 2 items a week, or one item every 4 days. With weekly crafting, he can earn 2204.8 gold per year (the same we will 3 levels from now) and with daily crafting he makes slightly less, at 1934.5 gold per year. This seems slightly curious to me, but alchemy is a weird science.

Our level 2 sundry item maker can still accelerated craft, since his average of 21 to his skill check puts him 10 over the average skill check needed for the average sundry item (can I say “average” again?). He makes an item every 5 days, or one a week, depending on which rules you want to use. With weekly wages he makes 1430 gold per year and with daily wages he can make up to 2007.5 gold per year. At lower levels, furnishing the general store is potentially better than forging armor or weapons.

If you exclude the spy glass maker and the water clock maker, the numbers drop significantly. The average price of a sundry item drops from 41.3 gold per item to 12.7 gold per item and nets our item maker only 8.5 gold per unit. However, since the value of the item went down, the crafting time also went down. He can now craft an item every 3 days, or 3 per week, depending on how you want to do the math. Weekly wages earn him 1326 gold per year and daily wages earn him 1028.5 gold per year. He is still significantly better off than the commoner.

Because I split the water clock and spy glass makers out of the sundry items group, I figure I should calculate their wages too. Each craftsman can make one of their items every 24 weeks, or about 2 per year. Earning 666.6 gold per unit, they make 1333.2 gold per year. Pretty comfortable living, compared to the common item maker.

And now to our journeyman juggler. With his +12 skill bonus, he can only manage a “great” performance every day, rather than a “memorable” one. He averages 1.65 gold per day, and assuming he juggles everyday for a year, he can earn 602.25 gold per year. Ouch. This cuts his wages more than in half. He’s barely better off than the industrious farmer, or the sailor who risks his life at sea or the baker who makes the bread he can barely afford.

Our apprentice crafter, with no ranks in a crafting skill, still only makes 36.5 gold per year. Perhaps he should be crafting spoons and lanterns instead.

The Royalty of Aruthien by way of the ranger Rath had asked us to sail south to Caliban to help the Queen Lysa and her people who were fleeing the army of Manath.  The call went out and we collected ourselves for our venture towards the Veil.

We arrive in Port Last as several of the refugee ships were beginning to unload.  It seems that King Resolute and his army had stayed back in order to buy his people the time to escape.  His valor had cost him and his men their lives, but it did allow his people to board their ships.  We had not been in port more than an hour when the Queen requested our special aid.  It seems that their fool king had ridden into battle with an ancient artifact and that this item needed to be returned to the queen as soon as possible.

Alder, and Aligendelite noble, agreed to the task – as did Athelas, Braden and the wizardess Holly – out of some noble inclination of the goodness of his heart.  I agreed because of how close it would take us to the edge of the veil.  No scribe had yet ventured and returned with any information on this mysterious barrier surrounding Manath’s lands.  Rath had been specifically ordered to help with the refugees, so he remained in port while the rest of us headed southward.

Our pilot would only take us so far down the Blood Shoals and soon we had to deship and travel overland to the site of the battle.  We arrived at dusk and decided that traveling under cover of darkness was our safest option.  I do believe that we were mistaken.

Not far from the coast was a set of ruins that emitted an ominous green glow.  Despite my cautions, the party decided to search them for clues.  Predictably, it was not long before some creature ambushed us.  Somewhat to my surprise, some sort of incorporeal undead were the aggressors.  They apparently had reacted to Alder’s noble insignia.  The fight was short and intense, as I am finding many of them to be.  The wraith had wounded Alder’s very core in the fray and he would need restorative magic eventually.  Again, against my cautions, the group decided to press onward.

We had barely left the ruins when we were confronted by a Manath patrol.  Unable to think quickly enough, we triggered an attack.  After a few moments of battle, it became apparent this patrol’s leader was not a bronze elf, as I had assumed.  She was a medusa, whose gaze could turn to stone.  It wasn’t long after I realized this that her cold stare caught mine, and I was petrified.  The account from here is second hand, as I did not return to my senses until we had arrived back in Port Last.

Athelas, whose story I most trust, said that Holly was also rendered immobilized by the medusa’s stare.  However, the patrol and its monstrous leader were dispatched.  The three remaining adventurers pressed onward to the battle site where they were attacked by a kyton.  Her chains were fierce but alone she was no match for the three of them.  They were able to find the king’s horse and a chalice in one of the saddle bags.  I am sure that there is much more that happened during this time but Athelas is a man of few words.

Upon return to Port Last, my stony imprisonment was reversed, as was Holly’s.  For reasons I still do not fully understand, Athelas had Holly’s cat transformed into a dragon for the lesser part of an hour.  Also, while returning to our ship to sail back to Caliban, I was made to touch the chalice.  This rendered me unconscious and I saw a dim vision.  Of what, I cannot be sure.  The other claimed to receive messages from relatives and even divine beings.

After arrived in Caliban, we relayed the news to the queen.  We also divulged some information regarding the chalice.  It was said that if the King of Ehrenland were to place it in a temple of goodness, that his country would be blessed.  As Ehrenland currently has no one claiming the throne, Athelas requested – as Ehrenlanders do, that is – that the chalice be brought to Doomsbridge, its rightful home.  He offered any who would come as safe a haven as Ehrenland could offer.

Thousands of refugees took the offer, as did Queen Lysa and her remaining family.  I too chose to join them.  Ostensibly it was to aid the sick and to properly establish temples, but my true intent – when the work was done – was to see the world inside the closed borders and to meet the almost mythical Den, former king of Ehrenland.

I have been able to now do both.  I return to the temples soon to continue my tutelage under Den.  I have had little time or desire to do much else but learn from him.  There might be a reason that Ehren books are written on trees: what they have to say, when they say it, is often worth listening to.

-M.E.

From the article:

One thing we certainly saw over the course of 2nd edition was the audience did tend to age along with the game. The game was a very playable, a very entertaining system, but it didn’t necessarily speak to the people who were coming up into the optimal RPG age category through new ways. When we were all playing 1st and 2nd Edition, we didn’t cut our teeth on MMOs or console gaming or Facebook or any of those things. At best, maybe we had experience playing Monopoly or games like that, Risk, so that D&D was a totally foreign thing. That’s just not true anymore.

To me, D&D is a different experience from anything computer-related.  It’s more social.  It’s group storytelling.  That’s fine, if that’s the population that Wizards wants to go after now, but as older, veteran gamers we feel a bit left out.

People today, the young kids today, are coming into exposure from D&D after having playing games that have very similar themes, often have very similar mechanics … they understand the concepts of the game. So in some ways they are much more advanced as potential game players. But in other ways, they are also coming from a background that is short attention span, perhaps, less likely interested in reading the rules of the game before playing.

What he seems to be saying here is that 4th Edition is aimed at the ADHD MMO player.  I’m not an MMO player.  I’ve never played WoW, Everquest, or Guild Wars.  Some players in our group have, but they see it as merely a diversion.  Our D&D world is a different recreational activity.  It’s not that MMO’s aren’t a fun game, but they usually lack the depth that our tabletop games do.

The eladrin is more recognition that the elf race historically in D&D has really been two races – it’s been the sort of super-smart, arcane, Elrond style elf, but it’s also been the primal, woodsy, archer-Legolas type elf. We wanted to make that distinction more apparent to the reader. And for eladrin we had a name and a concept for sort of the super-fey sitting out there and we felt that that was a good one to tweak a little bit and turn into a character race.

This built-in flavor is what annoys me the most about 4th Edition.  We play in our own world, we have our own history, and know where populations of each of the races are.  To have Elves split into two races was really inconvenient for us.  Plus the Eladrin are just kind of silly.  It seems a little specific anyway.  I mean, there are humans that live in cities as nobles, and there are humans that live alone in the mountains.  Both are still human.   I don’t see why Elves have to be different races to fill two different niches.

GT: You guys mentioned D&D Insider, which I do think offers some really great tools for D&D. Wizards has talked for a long time about creating a virtual tabletop – where are you guys with that?

LS: Well I can tell you that it’s still part of our plans, we haven’t announced anything yet, but we will.

AC: We unfortunately learned the hard way that it is often best to wait until you are really, really ready to announce digital offers, so we’re taking the conservative approach.

LS: But it’s definitely still part of our plan.

Yah, I was surprised when they announced the Virtual Tabletop.  I was intrigued to see it, and was aghast at all of the functionality that it was going to have.  Right now, I have to call it like I see it: vaporware.  It’s obviously over-promised and under-delivered.  I know a thing or two about software development, and it’s always better to release a minimal product first, then build on that, rather than promise the panacea to begin with.

AM: There’s been this return to classic D&D in the blogosphere. Do you guys see the old school renaissance as a good or bad thing for 4th edition D&D?

AC: I think anything that has people thinking about D&D, talking about D&D, playing D&D is a good thing. There are an awful lot of those old school experiments that lead to, “Well how would I do this with the new rule set? Or how would I use the new character archetypes in these older adventures?” I know that I ran a whole 4th edition playtest that lasted 6 or 8 months with my home group and all I did was pillage 1st and 2nd edition adventures.

I think the return to ‘classic’ gaming should be noted by Wizards as a referendum on 4th edition.  Many players are tired of  roll-playing over role-playing.  Instead of the mechanical “you do x and y happens,” they long for the older systems where exploration and being in character was rewarded.

AM: The stereotype of the 3rd edition buyer was the teenager from the 1st and 2nd edition who returned with money to spend and just bought a ton of books. Who is the 4th edition buyer? Who do people think the 4th edition buyer is and who is he actually?

LS: I think we see a pretty wide range of buyers. We see some of the people who you’re describing, who have aged through the editions, but we are also seeing new players coming to the game, a lot of them from MMOGs. We see some of that conversion from digital gamers who run through what MMOGs have to offer and they’re looking for something more.

But we’ve also got a new line of what we’re calling Dungeons and Dragons Essentials coming out this fall. Those products are really geared towards the new player… The Red Box actually kicks off those Essentials. The Red Box, being true to the original Red Box, is a complete game experience in a single purchase.

The Red Box sounds like a neat idea, but they seemed to just gloss over the veteran gamer in favor of the new gamer.  That’s what 4th Edition feels like to many of us, a ‘dumbing down’ of the game we’ve known and played for so long.

That said, I do think that 4th Ed could be fun for short, one-shot games.  I respect how easy it is to throw together an encounter and run monsters in 4th Edition.  I might even pick up a Red Box just to have around if we want to throw together a dungeon crawl on a slow night.  But that’s not typically the type of game we play — our games are usually planned out, and tied to a larger storyline.

The conversation about the OGL in the original article is almost a whole different discussion.  I do believe that its abandonment is a mistake, however.

GT: Many gamers are happy with D&D 3.5 and have stated that they’re sticking with Paizo’s continuation of that system. What do you think about Pathfinder?

AC: It’s based on a tremendously well-designed game. [Laughs all around] Obviously, we know all those guys, we worked side-by-side with many of them in years past. It doesn’t surprise me that there are companies out there that are looking to continue to support the third edition of the game. I remember somebody came up to me at one of the last couple Gen-Cons, sort of apologetic that they liked 3.5 better than 4th, and I had to remind them, “You know, I worked on both of those. It doesn’t make me feel bad that you like one game I helped design better than another game I helped design.”

I think they’re both great games, and if they were more similar the hobby would be worse for it. I think it’s better to have games that are more distinct from one another that gives people clear choices. “Well this is the style of game I want to play, or this other one is the style of game I want to play.” Nothing wrong with that. I think the 4th edition has a much greater growth potential than previous iterations of the game, I think it’s friendlier to the audience, I think it’s a little more cognizant of what new generations of gamers are looking for in an experience.

Again, they seem to be focusing on the new player.  That’s fine with me, we’re having fun with Pathfinder.  We’re excited to see what Paizo comes out with in the future.  It’s a better ‘flavor’ for us.

I can see the appeal of an easy-to-grasp edition of D&D for the MMO set.  I can continue to respect Wizards for their decision to go that direction (they are a business, after all).  We’re just not that audience.

Finally, all you job hunters out there can quantify your ranks in ‘rope use’ or ‘disable device’, and brag about your +10 to hit with a keyboard.

So, roll up some confidence and get out there and slay an interview or two!  Any experience points are good experience points.