Pony Day

My two favorite ponies made this week.

As seen in the episode "Luna Eclipsed", the counters to Princess Celestia's Royal Guard, are the Royal Guard of Princess Luna

From the episode "Sweet & Elite", a pony of high fashion, Prim Cut

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session V

Game time, fairly short session. It got delayed by Mary oversleeping, but there was sufficient activity that everyone leveled. Adam, as usual, slaughtered like no other. Pat showed off the unholy terror he is capable of unleashing when in melee. Mary showed off her usual heavy amounts of psychotically violent tendencies with overt greed. Jon, not sure what to do with him. His rolling is amazing, on a level more severe than Adam's in the opposite direction. On top of the fact he chose a specific build (Illusion-based arcanist) with exceedingly low combat quality unless you have solid tactics, which he doesn't have and barely acknowledges his non-combat strengths.

Either way, on with the summary!


Nightfall was on the horizon, and the party climbed down to begin reconnaisance of the logging camp. Analee and the innocence demon disappeared, and the refugees were given some food and told which way to go. Once they reached the camp, they split up and stayed at the fringes until nightfall so they could get a good estimate of the numbers they were facing. Jon almost got spotted by one of archers, but Adam gave him the suggestion of creating the illusion of a deer to convince them it was a harmless sound. As it turned out, there were roughly fifty guards and well over 200 refugees enslaved.

There was a 30' wide pit circled by a 50' sequioa tower, a private log cabin, four barracks, and a storage building. There were constantly three archer guards on the door to the tower at all times, and at least one patrol of five guards even during the evening. Analee, wearing her innocent dress, and the innocence demon came up to the camp openly and were admitted into the captain's private cabin.

With Adam's direction, they snuck in under the cover of illusion as simple guards, hammered pitons into the doors of the barracks, and threw makeshift molotovs (lamp oil, roughly as alchemist's fire). The archers were more or less taken care of, while the party high-tailed it to where alot of the large stumps were for cover. A patrol headed for them, did some damage, but got killed somewhat quickly. Enough chaos was caused so that the party was uninterrupted doing this, and then Adam followed suit with stunts and the like to shoot some of the burning guards back into other guards, actually getting them set on fire.

After a few rounds of shooting fish in a burning barrel, the captain of the gaurd appeared and commanded the land sharks to attack the party. He was wearing the cape that signified him as a guard for the Black Lotus Eaters, which verified the information from the refugees.

After a bit of arguing, I let the sharks stay above ground when they did their jumps to try and bite them. Pat was taken under right off the bat, and the other two kept missing sufficiently and failing to maintain their hold on Adam when they bit him (really damn high Escape Artist rolls). They unleashed a terribly high amount of damage, enough to actually kill the remaining two within three rounds.

The captain of the guard showed himself, holding a waraxe over a barely conscious party member still being held in the mouth of a shark, threatening to end him there if the party didn't show themselves within two minutes. Meanwhile, the innocence demon was on the roof of the private cabin preparing the materials for smores (setting's equivalent).

The party snuck from the back to try and get into the private cabin through a window, only to be stopped by a nervous Analee, who revealed that the man was like an ox after all the poison he took and he was very nervous about the demon. Mary tried to convince her to let them in so they could just stab in surprise, but Analee said that he was the only thing keeping the shark from going into a blood frenzy and eating their friend right then and there. Thinking quickly, Adam gave her a black lotus blossum and gave her a message to relay to meet them in 10 minutes personally.

He met them, threatened to kill him anyway, and the guards were sufficient to take them out if he alerted them. The captain seemed unfazed at the threats that the party was good enough to kill him before the guards could react fast enough, and offered them a chance to go away scott free if one of them agrees to a one-on-one duel with him in an hour. Reluctantly, the pary agreed, with the very heavy plan that Mary would duel and Adam would suddenly unleash a flurry of arrows into the captain so that he will die.

Before they began this plan, the demon appeared again in full-grown woman form, begging and pleading with the party to stop the killing and violence. She had a streak of gray hair that wasn't there before, and showed a massive bite mark on her torso that was still bleeding. As the party wasn't swayed by this (trying to argue on the state of slavery), she reluctantly offered to end the situation if they agreed to stop killing.

With a flurry, she became a large hag-like nightmare whose touch disintegrated the ground like eggshells and flew through the ground. Holding the shark like a rag doll, she forcefully pulls Pat's character out of its jaws and throws him to the ground (hurt, but still alive). She begins to slowly grab random guards and rend them limb-from-limb, causing even more havoc.

Suddenly, the door to the tower flies open and a true Melnibonean arcanist steps out and imprisons the demon in a wall even it cannot readily burn through. The party gets into a defensive stance, only to discover that the arcanist to be understanding and cordial. He tames the demon into the form of a little girl with treats and new clothes, treating her as a loving father, commenting that she was under the effects of scapegoat magicks (tied to something and taking all pain/suffering in its stead).

Initially, he applauded the binding talent on Jon's part, who soon revealed that he barely knew anything of the demon or even why she was bound to them. Regardless, he encouraged them to care for her and to contact him if they found any further information that could lead to breaking the scapegoat spell on her. He seemed genuinely concerned about the suffering she was going through because of the spell, which had given SO much pain that even an innocence demon couldn't shrug it off and was storing it as a defense mechanism. Handing them a feather that can somehow relay a message to him, he then agrees to release the refugees, claiming that he got enough wood for his needs.

The party then leaves quickly, grabbing a few of the sequoia-wood bows and mauls wielded by the fallen (quite a penny on the open market, for the wood alone). The captain of the guard is obviously disgruntled, and vows to hunt them down as soon as the demon isn't around to protect them.

Pony Day

Today is of particular note, Sanada's begun to create custom miniature ponys. So far, she's created and posted the following:

Each are wearing show accurate outfits from the Grand Galloping Gala, in order from left to right: Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie.

Look out next week for Applejack and Twilight Sparkle.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session IV

Very short session today, due to Mary oversleeping (I worry about that sleep schedule of hers sometimes), and having to head home early to care for her S.O. Probably a good thing, as we were shy Adam for the day because he forgot that Sunday was game day and made plans with other people for the day (and wasn't given too much choice to change his mind once he realized the conflict).


The party, having seen the devastation of the heavy logging in the area, were about to just shrug and walk away. They managed to see a trio of chained men stumbling rapidly towards the path they were walking down, and waited to see what they had to say. Screaming, they begged for safety and the like, a mysterious woman seemed to jump out from the trees to try to help the strangers out of concern. She pleaded Jon for his healer's kit to bandage them, as they had bleeding callouses on their hands and were quite exhausted (as well as the beginning of malnutrition).

Terribly confused, Jon gave the woman his kit so that she began to bandage them, and Pat noticed that four guards where marching towards them. The refugee trio begged for safety and cowered to the side of the path when they heard that the guards were coming, repeatedly lamenting that they were all dead and that 'he' would send the sharks.

Once the guards got there, they grinned happily and the lead one declared that the party's gear would sell for a good chunk of change. As they charged, Analee appeared out of the bushes and practically eviscerated the guard that was lagging behind. The rest of the party dealt with the remaining three, having suffered heavy wounds, and one of them surrendered.

Tying down the surrendered one, Mary demanded information, but failed to intimidate him sufficiently for any help. The guard quickly went unconscious from the pain when she began removing toenails, which made the strange woman from earlier leap to his defense and not wanting any unnecessary suffering to happen, even using the remains of her bandages to start fixing the damage already dealt to the guard. By this point, Jon noticed (due to his arcane training) that the woman wasn't even human, and showed signs of being a demon. He called it out on her, managing to convince her to tell him what she was.

Not terribly convinced, the woman said she was an innocence demon, a type of chaos demon that exemplifies innocence and retains such no matter what atrocity is levied upon them; be it emotional, physical, or even intellectual she will be untouched almost immediately after the deed is performed upon them. Their natural state is that of a small, happy girl that is blissfully ignorant of even the most rampant sin. For a full-grown woman who is painfully aware of such pain is...weird, to say the least.

The demon got nervous talking about what she was, and ran into the woods out of fear, where Jon simply tracked her down and found a little girl (with the same style/color dress as the woman). The girl offered a flower to him, and asked if he had any toys. Jon, confused as the tracks of the woman stopped there and the girl showed even more signs of her demon nature (to his trained eye), led her back to the camp to see if she remembered anything. As she didn't, he didn't quite know what to do.

This was all interrupted when one of the prisoners, having had the locks on their chains removed earlier, suddenly used the chain as a weapon and beat Mary into unconsciousness. Acting quickly, Pat jumped behind him and cut him down within six seconds, letting Jon work to fix Mary.

The other two prisoners were confused, as they didn't expect one to be a spy, and began to worry that 'the boss' would now send his sharks after them. This was proven to be true within half an hour, when the little girl demon was playing with some sticks to make a wreath and a 20' long shark leapt out of the ground and bit down on her.

Within seconds, it came up again and spat up a bloodied girl and began to circle the rest of the party. They tried their best to damage it, but after Mary stabbed it in the eyes, it sank back down and didn't come back up. As this shark wasn't desperate, they knew it was would likely wait a few minutes for its healing to fully repair it and then return (hit and run tactics are their preferred). The refugee/prisoners, Jon, and Pat began to climb trees and wait while Mary contemplated tying a body and 'going fishing'. When the shark never arrived, they began to talk from their arboreal hiding spots.

Analee discovered, from the refugees, that there are at least several dozen guards (if not more), and over two hundred slaves working the logging operation. The leader of the camp was a black lotus guard that was without his arcanist master, which implied he was either a rogue guild member or an imposter, as the refugees knew nothing of any superior to the camp leader. One of the early things they were forced to do was to construct a windowless, single-door tower that the leader did not ever enter and recently began to post guards to make sure none enter or leave it.

Curious, the party began to plot on how to deal with these facts, especially since Pat now wants to know what's in the tower and the refugees want their bretheren to be freed.

Boss Fights

In terms of plot, I occasionally run into concerns on making any particular villain too powerful for their role, which crops up when trying to maintain a challenge with the party. I also worry about how to handle a villain that logically has the means to get himself raised, or some of the consequences if the villain actually had a life outside its lair. 

That's only a little bit of thought on plot considerations. Probably the most difficult aspect for me is the actual mechanical considerations. 

Past the low levels, a party of level appropriate characters can bring considerable force to bear without even using any teamwork. This makes 4v1 fights a challenge to design, as an 8th level party can easily dump over 100+ damage in a single round, making many lucky to survive two whole rounds. If action-denial or similar is used to much effect, then our boss is basically hoping for a good initiative to actually do anything. Finding anything that can survive and act for an entire three or four rounds is almost the same as finding something that can one-shot a character. 

The longer they last, the faster they can kill, which makes upgrading a boss difficult because a linear lifespan increase is an almost exponential damage output. 

Then there's the option of toning down the boss and giving him friends to help him, which can get cumbersome if ill-designed. You need to take into account that you need to plan well for this, because you can just as easily end up punishing yourself by making the boss not as big. As a rule, players are going to team up and focus fire on the boss. This is surprisingly easy with spells and bows (or flying melee if the minions aren't airborne), making the presence of minions superfluous in terms of actually extending the boss's lifespan. 

We return to the same problem. Putting a nametag on the villain makes their insurance premiums skyrocket, and life-expectancy is directly proportional to CPR (characters per round). I have contemplated using this in my games... 

Boss Template: Triple hit points, raise saving throws by +4. Increase CR by 2. 

It's a means of adding padding to the Rocket Launcher Tag that is D&D, theoretically allowing me to still have a boss that has an actual lifespan without as much worry about one-shotting anybody. However, it suffers from not really addressing the flaw of one-dimensional strategy, and those who don't enjoy throwing numerical combos don't have fun doing it an extra round or two.

One option that holds a lot more potential is giving the boss only medium offense but good defense, while carrying around a good size posse of minions that have low offense and VERY low defense. When you can one-shot the skeleton that does 1/3 the damage of the necromancer, then it's in the party's best tactical interests to save the necromancer for last if it takes so little as four attacks to take him down. However, a party is not usually that tactically minded and there exists A LOT of psychological traction to put on the blinders and focus fire with extreme prejudice, and this is assuming that the party can even see the offense/defense ratios between boss and underling.

Even then, with D&D in particular, it is common for character builds allow for extremes in damage output and not always in a very distributed fashion. The ones that do high damage do twice that of the low damage dealers, if we're lucky (I've seen a five-fold difference). Amongst those high damage dealers, some spread it out over three or more separate attacks while others dump it all into a focused all-or-nothing attack for the round. The survivability of the necromancer and his skeletons are going to vary wildly depending on which character's attacks are made as the baseline. If I use the lower value attack as the baseline, then the higher-damage character will have incentive to use his attacks efficiently on the necromancer, because the higher damage will be wasted on skeletons. If I make the necromancer require four attacks from the big hitter to go down, then I'm back to the original problem of finding such a creature that can survive four of those; the power-hitter of my 10th level game does ~120 per round, and I know of no such monster with 360+ HP that won't eat the party for breakfast.

Mini-Module: Shrinking Room

For use in any of your dungeons. Obviously, it is something that you adjust according to the needs of your campaign, but it's originally designed for one of the more pulpy D&D genre gaming.

If you're stumped for reasons why this dungeon exists, working under the assumption you need a reason for it to be there, feel free to use this random table for it.

Reasons for the Shrinking Room (d6)

1. Door is a malfunctioning portal to the microverse, maybe it can be repaired

2. Temporary storage closet, the door on the other side will reverse the process

3. A wizard was cursed to have everyone near him feel as small as he did, his corpse lies buried beneath the floor while the magic continues, the process will reverse once you move 20' beyond the door

4. The mushroom emits magical spores. Killing it will undo the effects of anything shrunk in the last 24 hours

5. It is a prison for a giant, ancient, sentient, & evil bacterium that has been shrunk several times. If the magic is undone, the reversal will release it upon the world. Undoing the magic is as simple as finding the stone carvings in the room as marring them significantly

6. In the back of the mouse hole, there is a portal to another room/wing of the dungeon that also reverses the shrinking magic

A1. Shrinking Room

A plain and simple cubical room of aged, cracked stonework, 10’ on each side. Spiderwebs, moss, dustbunnies, and mouse droppings are almost everything of note in the room. On the opposite wall is a stoutly reinforced wooden door, and in the center is a mushroom with a tiny sign sticking out of it with two words written on it, “EAT ME.”

Any who enter the room will shrink to 1/70th their original size, making the average human one inch tall and the room 700’ in each dimension while shrunk. The door’s shrinking property functions only one way, and going through a second time will cause the character to shrink into nothingness, forever lost. Every twenty subjective feet there is a 10’ wide crevasse where the stonework has separated, going down between 10’ and 20’.

Halfway from the door to the mushroom, there is a large trapdoor spider that will attack the party from one of the crevasses. There are seven others; one over the exit door, two in two different ceiling corners, three inside the abandoned mouse hole guarding a single gold piece, and another between the mushroom and one of the corners on the floor.
Three roving packs of small dust bunnies roam the room, attacking anything except spiders and will not approach within 6” of the mushroom or any spider. Each pack is 80 strong.




The mushroom in the center will attack anything that comes within it’s 6” reach. There is small text on the bottom of the sign reading “one side will make you grow larger, the other will make you grow smaller.” Eating from one side of the mushroom will make the character grow to their original size, while the other will cause them to shrink into nothingness.

The coin from the mouse hole will grow with player if it’s carried with them, but it weighs 15 tonnes in total. If any part of the coin is broken off and subsequently enlarged, the remainder will not enlarge.


1E D&D
Dust Bunny - AC 8, MV 3”, HD 1hp, #AT 1, D 1-3
Mushroom - AC 7, MV 1”, HD 6, hp 63, #AT 4, D 1-4/1-4/1-4/1-4; two simultaneous attacks against the same character equal entanglement and force a save against poison or be unconscious for one turn
Large Trapdoor Spider - AC 4, MV Nil, HD 4+4, hp 28, #AT 1, D 2-8, save vs poison at +1 or be killed with a bite

3.X/Pathfinder
Large Trapdoor Spider - Use giant black widow hunting spider


Mushroom - Use violet fungus with 20’ reach, no movement speed, and camouflaged to look innocuous (Perception 20 to recognize)


Dust Bunny Swarm (CR 2)
N Tiny (swarm)
Init +6; Senses Low-Light vision, Scent; Perception +8
Defense
AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 size)
HP 16 (3d8+3)
Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +2
Defensive Abilities swarm traits
Offense
Speed 25’
Melee swarm (2d6)
Space 10’; Reach 0’
Special Attacks Distraction (DC 12)
Statistics
Str 2, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 2
Base Atk +2; CMB -; CMD -
Feats Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perception)
Skills Acrobatics +6, Climb +10, Perception +8, Stealth +14

Pony Day

Today's ponies are another of Sanada Ookami's creations on E-Bay.

Another member of the Wonderbolts, Soarin'.

The premier fashion pony in Equestria, his boutique holds the latest in pony coutre, Hoity Toity.