Home of the Odd Duk

Author: Bear (Page 137 of 212)

Anabe

The plane of Jugu is a vast swamp dotted with areas of relatively dry land throughout. A skilled primordial summoner learns of Jugu at some point in their career due to the vast numbers of Anabe found here.

The Anabe range in color from bright red to deep blue and every color in-between. Typical Anabe are a pale yellow or a sickly green color. They are recognizable for the large caps on the back of their oval shaped heads. They are roughly humanoid and stand about five feet tall. They have very long arms - their three-fingered hands almost reach their feet. Their faces appear to have two eye slits and a larger horizontal slit where a mouth should be. They have the appearance of a tight-lipped smile with their eyes closed.

Anabe do not organize socially. They are the lone semi-intelligent creature on their plane and do not have enemies there. Many Anabe live a solitary life in search of food and reproduction. To reproduce, an Anabe removes a small portion of their cap and throws it to the ground. In two weeks, a small Anabe begins to emerge from an egg-shaped plant. At five weeks, the Anabe is fully grown and ready to scavenge for food.

All Anage are immune to all diseases, even supernatural ones like mummy rot. Anabe are also immune to all poison. They also regenerate wounds very quickly.

Individual abilities vary widly. It is believed that all the many special abilities of the Anabe have not yet been discovered. When encountered, roll on the table below to determine the summoned Anabe's abilities:

Roll 2d6
1 Roll 2 Hurtful Abilities
2-4 Roll 1 Hurtful Ability
5-8 Roll 1 Hurtful and 1 Helpful ability
9-11 Roll 1 Helpful Ability
12 Roll 2 Helpful Abilities
Roll 1d8
Hurtful Ability Helpful Ability
1 Insanity Cure Insanity
2 Priest Bane Priest Boon
3 Change Color Remove Color
4 Generate Poison Cure Poison
5 Generate Disease Cure Disease
6 Grow Shrink
7 Clean Water Foul Water
8 Weaken Strengthen

Notes:

Both Insanity and Cure Insanity are temporary effects lasting 2d8 hours. Saving throw negates the effect.

The Preist Bane is an experience so blasphemous to the priest that he or she can only cast 1st Priest spells for one day. If the priest cannot cast 2nd level or higher spells, the priest will not be able to cast any spells for one day.

The Priest Boon is an experience so enlightening, the priest can cast one spell at a level higher than his or her highest level. If the priest can only cast up to 4th level spells, the priest will gain the one-time ability to cast a 5th level spell of his choosing. If the priest can already cast 7th level spells, the priest gains the ability to cast two 7th level spells.

The effect of Change Color or Remove Color lasts for 2d8 days.

The Cure Poison and Cure Disease abilities are permanent. The poison or diseaseĀ  generated by the Generate Poison or Generate Disease abilities is up to the GM.

The Anabe with the grow ability can transform to 1d4 times its normal size. The shirnk ability grants the Anabe to ability to shrink to 1d4 times its normal size.

The ability to Clean Water can remove contaminants from enough water to last four people for one day of hard traveling. The ability to Foul Water affects just as much water. Both effects are permanent.

The Weaken ability does 1d4 points of Strength damage. The Strengthen ability grants 1d4 additional points of Strength. Both effects wear off at the rate of one point a day.

A Different Division of Rulebooks

I posted about this in G+, but wanted to expand on the thoughts here.

It starts with this post from Greywulf.

The shared worlds thing was already done with Spelljammer. As I said in G+, Dragon Magazine even had an article for porting over Space:1889.

As far as writing style, I am all over the end to the Gamebooks are Technical Manuals school of thought. Even the rules to Life (boardgame) are not as dry as other game rules.

I don't like to use minis, so I'm just skipping that part.

I wanted to focus on the bit about doing this with an OGL game like Labyrinth Lord. To do one better in this exercise, why not just go straight to Microlite 20. One page of rules, many possibilities, right? Well, let's start with M20 Purest Essence. 17 pages.

The PHB: Remove all race and class information and the Game Master's Guide. Also remove the spell lists and the creature lists. What you're left with is about one page of rules to play the game.

The GMG: The entire M20 Purest Essence, although it will need to be organized.

Then we have the codices:

Humans - Race information for humans (+1 to all skills). Class information for all humans playing the various classes.Ā  Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. The only place with a universal spell list is the GMG. That's just the crunchy stuff. The rest is history, a section like the Roman Way called the Human way. Outposts of humans in various game worlds, etc. Art, fluff, lots of stuff.

Elves - Race information for Elves (+2 MIND). Class information for all elves playing the various classes. Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. You see where I'm going.

At the table, the player has a codex and a one page handout for rules. The GM has the GM Guide.

What do you think?

What’s in a round?

While going through and rebuilding the spells with the spell building system, I ran across a big problem. Many of the spells were computing to second level spells, but were considerably weaker than spells listed in the PHB or even in the d20srd.

I couldn't figure it out until I realized my mistake.

I played D&D with 10 second rounds. I wrote Andras for 1 minute rounds. When I started using the spell building system, values for minutes were an order of magnitude higher than values for rounds.

I tried to rewrite the table as I hadn't changed much from d6 Fantasy at that time. Yet, the more I tried, the less it worked. I say that, but I think I got close only to realize that I had accidentally built something a little too close to EABA's master table of values.

One minute rounds just don't work for the spell system. The cost is pretty high for a spell that lasts more than a couple one-minute rounds. So, I decided to abstract the whole thing.

In one round, you can move half your move rate and attack. Kick over a table, jump on top of it and swing off the chandelier? Ok, you can do that in one round. Cast a spell? sure. Cast two spells with a casting time of 1? No. Move ten feet and cast a spell with a 6 casting time? Ok. Negotiate with the gelatinous cube? Unless you have a Speak with Goop spell already in effect, it won't do you much good, but sure, you can talk at it.

(I've actually had someone try to reason with a gelatinous cube. It didn't end well for neither negotiator nor cube.)

Point is, if you look at the spell building table, you find a round is 10 seconds. However, in the player's guide, that won't be mentioned.

If I can rebuild the table I will, but until then, this is what I got.

Hopefully, I'll be back with more content on the weekend. I also hope to have some news about the OSR Co-op

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