61- Combat!
June 21, 2008
“The vaulted door of the crypt slowly opens inwards. In your lantern light you see large room- perhaps 20′ wide and 50′ deep. Set along each of the longer walls are a row of carved stone sarcophagi, between each sarcophagus are statues depicting the jackal-god of the underworld. They are made of some dark rock and are just over 8′ tall. Against the far wall you can dimly make out a much larger statue of Karaph, the deity that the priests of this ruined temple once worshiped. The statue looks to be made of a white stone- Dhuroth you recognize it to be fine marble- and is nearly 20′ fall, her head almost touching the ceiling. She is holding her hands out at her waist with the palms up. A faint glow comes from each. What do you want to do players?
“Okay then- you enter the room. Myrkan, Dhuroth, and Himbult the Grey approach the statue of Karaph to examine it more closely. Palinor and Urp-Ra you are guarding the hall in case there are more ghouls haunting this ruin. Ziblan the Arcane you are studying the sarcophagi for any inscriptions while Berrianli looks for any secret doors or hidden compartments along the west wall. Finally Truroth the Far Wanderer is looking at the sarcophagus nearest to him. Oh, so you want to open the sarcophagus?
“As you do so a magic mouth appears on the statue of Karaph and speaks in a booming, ominous voice- ‘Who dares defile the crypt of the priests of Karaph, the Queen of Suffering?! You shall know misery untold, foolish ones! Interlopers, prepare to meet thy doom !’ You are all suddenly aware that the each of the ten jackal-headed statues jerk suddenly to life, some gripping wicked looking copper kopesh swords, others heavy flail. Roll for surprise…”
And so begins another battle in AD&D. Looks like the barbarian should have held his lust for jewels in check (No, not her. Her possibly)? But how do we run a fight, eh? Fear not, Gygax will explain it to us… in 21 pages.
Fasten your seat belts- It’s going to be a bumpy night… err… day. Whatever.
“Invisibility
‘Now I’ll sneak up on the monster invisibly!’ How often has this cry rung forth from eager players in your campaign? How often have you cursed because of it? Never fear, there are many answers to the problem of invisibility, and most difficulties will be resolved after you read the following rules and suggestions regarding the subject.”
(I cheated a bit, since the invisibility discussion started on page 59.)
At last, the oft-referenced section on invisibility. Most of this discussion is about how useless invisibility is, or at least the various ways that player invisibility can be foiled. The key flaw of invisibility is the fact that the invisibility is visual only and does not effect sound or scent. Effectively then invisibility will only work on intelligent creatures, since most animals rely on scents or vibrations. My cats, for example, are much more interested in how I smell rather than how I look, particularly if I smell like food. As a gamer I do think it is important to avoid stinking personally, since I’ve met more than one rpg enthusiast who was, as Lovecraft would say, rather noisome.
Even if you can cloak the sound of your breathing (hello silence 15′ radius!) and the stink of your breath (this is a medieval fantasy here… or it could just be Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and onion dip…) there is still the possibility that you’ll disturb some dust, leave a “shimmering in the air”, or some such invisibility faux pas, and you’ll be detected. For some odd reason, being invisible only has an attack modifier of -4 (making you 20% harder to hit, for those of you out there who don’t own a d20 or a copy of “Keep on the Borderlands” (which in the fullness of self-disclosure, remember I thought that was an injunction rather than a location)). That’s not all that impressive, honestly.
Of course, we have a table to determine if a monster detects an invisible character- the two axes are “level or hit dice” and “intelligence”. This sort of make sense- older or more powerful creatures are more experienced and therefor more familiar with the tell-tale signs of invisible concealment… but honestly the “level/hit dice” point where you can even begin to notice invisible things is 7- and then only if you have an intelligence of 17 or higher and you still have only a 5%.
This is highly problematic. What you really need is to know A) the creature’s chief method of sensing B) creature’s intelligence and C) some ‘experience’ modifier. There is no way an invisible me could sneak past a dog, particularly a guard dog, or even a fire-breathing dog-like creature. There should also be some sort of dexterity modifier (or even wisdom) to see how well the invisible player maintains their invisibility. Do you start playing with a pair of shoes and do a little tap dance or stick to the walls and skulk about?
In computer gaming terms, I recall that invisibility really only worked as a -4 modifier to determine if you were hit most of the time. Even with the standard Wellsian “I’m invisible and ca-RAY-zee!” trope, invisibility wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Mirror- “It is important for DMs to remember that in order to be reflective, a mirror must have a light source.” How zen. (For the record, that is the enter entry for mirrors.)
Detection of Evil and/or Good- Most of what is written here completely undermines how the detect evil/good spells were used in most versions of AD&D I played. In our games, this spell was a default casting on just about every item and NPC we encountered. Harmless barkeep who mentions a lost treasure? Detect Evil! Friendly hermit who offers us food? Detect Evil! Meet Dick Cheney? Well… In reality, the spell should only work on “powerful” sources of evil and or good, such as a high level character (8th and up), holy water, etc. It is also something that is obvious to notice when cast and takes a full round of action. So you can’t cast it under your breath so good king B’lablah won’t notice. I found the reminder that traps are neither good nor evil somewhat redundant since traps can’t have intent, but I think that way of thinking come from hanging around lawyers for whom intent is more than just a way of camping. (Cymbal crash.) Thanks, I’ll be here all week! Try the brisket, it’s lovely.
Listening at doors- Not just for voyeurs and private eyes any more! This entire skill is a giant red flag that points towards the dungeon-crawling basis of the game (it is in the title, after all). So, you’re in a dungeon (consisting of a series of 10′ x 10′ corridors, populated by a random series of creatures). You’re about to enter a room and want to know what to expect behind the standard iron-banded door. What do you do but put your ear to it and listen.
Apparently this desire to be prepared (thanks Mr. Baden-Powell!) ticked off Gary Gygax mightily. “[C]ontinual listening [at doors] becomes a great bother to the DM.” How do you deal with this ‘bother’? Is it to create a different type of door-free dungeon (like my open plan Jr. High School, perhaps)? Is it to have a dungeon that follows some internal logic so that each room isn’t a “Let’s Make a Deal” box? Perhaps it is to simply come to terms with your annoyance?
Obviously the solution is to return the bother via a series of passive-aggressive sanctions. Constant notes about how you must take off your head gear to listen? Check. A list of silent monsters? Check. The dreaded ‘ear seeker‘ (think Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan)? Check!
One thing I didn’t realize (and I must point out that we listened at doors only rarely and under certain circumstances- such as when it was actually reasonable to) is that some players are ‘keen-eared’. No, I don’t mean the Spock-like glasses-hangers of the elves (I’d google ‘elf ears’ but I’m afraid I’ll find some pervtacular site dedicated to Lord of the Rings all about Liv Tyler or Orlando Blooms’ prosthetic ears and various, shall we say, unwholesome desires). What I’m referring to is that a small portion of each race has a bonus to listening at doors; this bonus is either 5 or 10% (which one you gain is unclear) and the odds of having keen hearing is equal to the base chance of your race to listen at doors (from 2 in 20 for humans, half-elves, and dwarves, to 4 in 20 for gnomes). Wow- a character advantage no one was constantly trying to get. Color me amazed.
The remainder of the section lists various limitations to listening- only three attempts before “the strain becomes too much” and you must rest, no more than 3 listeners per door-rather arbitrary, no?- and an injunction to describe the sounds heard rather than flatly revealing the contents of a room. I guess this is a bit like Christmas really. Players want to shake the box and see if it is a sweater or a box of Legos (or, say a pack of gnolls versus an umber hulk) while mom and dad (i.e. the DM) want it to be a surprise.
Next- Combat! (Be strong.)
Page 59: Infravision and Ultravision
June 10, 2008
Infravision (not, as I have previously mentioned, pronounced in-fray-zhun) and ultravision (not, as I might have said earlier a suped-up version of The Vision) are two spectra that are visible to non-humans (or humans using certain spells or magic items); reading the description of each, I’m struck at the weirdly arbitrary limitations imposed. To whit-
Infravision- “the ability to see light waves in the infrared spectrum” only has a range of 60 feet (or 60′, whichever you’d prefer) indoors- though this is never clearly stated- and outdoors anywhere from 100 to 300 feet. Now, I’m just a simple country lawyer, but wouldn’t availability of infrared light, as determined by range and by the intensity of the source, determine how far away objects would be visible? From the description given, AD&D ‘infravision’ is the same as thermal imaging-
“they note differences in thermal radiation, hot or cold. They do not ’see’ things which are the same temperature as their surroundings. Thus, a room in a dungeon might look completely blank, as walls, floor, ceiling, and possibly even some wooden furniture within are all of the same temperature.”
So, let’s imagine Yblynde Fairbow, Grey Elf fighter and all-around average Legolas knock-off (admit it, you all played one). He’s in the Caverns of Ubik the Mad, seeking the lost treasure of Et Seterah… you get the idea. In one of said caverns, this one a huge cave several hundred feet across, is the dreaded red dragon Fhautaukemikal-Smaug sitting atop a vast pile of gold, jewels, magic items, and a VW Beetle (the DM thinks that’s funny.) In a strict reading of the rules, the creature would be invisible to our elfin friend unless he moved within 60′ of it and thereby would almost certainly be eaten. Hell, Mr. F-S could be sending huge gouts of flame into the air during his fire elementals and efreeti vs. frost giants and hoar hounds volleyball game and our hero wouldn’t see squat until he was standing in the pineapple salsa.
Some special types of beings have an ever-so-much-more impressive range of 90′- these poor bastards are emitting infra-red rays from their eyes (it beat X-rays, I guess). Apparently these are mostly monsters. Perhaps this is why you can see those glowing-red eyes so often in the dark. Or is that just me?
Just because it is fun, here is what a pair of ostriches look like in the infra-red spectrum:
As for ultravision, it is even more limited. It doesn’t work underground, unless there is a source of ultraviolet radiation; it doesn’t work on cloudy nights (since you can’t use it in the light, weirdly); hell, magic items that give off light ruin it too (heroes need a good tan apparently). I guess it is only useful with your black light Sabbath posters. This explains all the demi-humans working at Spencer Gifts. The sub-humans, well, your guess is as good as mine.
Art: The first actual art in some time (not counting diagrams), this is another piece by Darlene.
(To see the whole thing, click here.) This is a pretty cool piece, ominous if not even a little portentous. It always informed my notion of what things looked like via ultravision, even thought that is obviously not the intention. I like game art that suggests the viewer is but a witness to some greater action and that elicits some theorizing on their part as to what has come before and what will come later. The whole ‘chick posing in buckles and leather‘ or ‘burly fighter grips weapon‘ scene leaves me cold… which you could see if you A) had infravision and B) were less than 20 yards away.
(Before we tackle the remainder of movement, I wanted to take a moment and mention that in reading some of the AD&D modules I picked up recently, I was struck by how much I really liked A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (though that title has a certain bouquet of a specific variety of pornography). I remember when I first read it I was less than impressed at types of encounters- kobolds!?! fungus men?? a giant crab!!!- but rereading it I found it to be a pleasant departure from the standard fare and a good means of incorporating puzzles without being yet another wizard’s tower/deadly tomb. Errol Otus’ art is also very nice… though the illustration, not by Otus, of a figure charging to the rescue of a busty lass entangled by a roper is possibly the worst bit of art I’ve ever seen in a TSR product.)
So what do we have here? Mostly we have a conclusion of Gygax’s musing about AD&D characters visiting other planes. He suggests, instead of creating a new set of rules for each new plane, using other TSR games as a standby; I know of Boot Hill and Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha, but what was Tractics? (Oh.)
Much of the rest is an extended example of the sorts of things a DM might consider if, as in the earlier suggestion of allowing flying mounts to be capable of reaching the moon. Reasonable advice, all in all (build upon the way you expanded your campaign from local area to several nations); I’m amused that he assumes most campaigns included “occasional side trips to Layers of the Abyss or whatever”. You’d think they sold package tours- “see Hrugg’zypnok’s Molten Copper Lake of Suffering! (lunch after)”
Turning to outdoor movement (oooh, look at the pretty tables…) you have just what you’d expect, several tables offering movement rates for people on foot, mounted, and shipboard (well, raftboard in some cases) along with the pertinent modifiers. Not much to dwell on really- racial modifiers are mentioned but not given. Perhaps they are just implied? Some of this system seems a bit cumbersome- current speed modifiers to river travel, for example- but nothing is too onerous.
“Tomorrow:” Infravision and Ultravision
I’m not sure these topics fit anywhere together save for perhaps in the DMG, but that’s one of the charms of the book, isn’t it?
More than 3/4ths of the page are taken up by a lengthy list of spells that either A) don’t work under water or B) are significantly modified by water. You’d thin, since spells are dependent on the very breath of the caster to take effect, that being underwater might modify all spells but that is not the case.
Many of the proscribed spells can still be cast underwater so long as they are “within the bound of a airy water spell”. Most of these spells make sense (and this list can double as a collection of every fire spell in the game, honestly) though a few are questionable- no control weather? No Creeping Doom? Wouldn’t that just bring on a swarm of ravenous shrimp?
The modified spells are an interesting lot- Earthquake become quite nasty (no stats for starting a tsunami though) while fly makes swimming a breeze (so to speak). The ice based spells (such as Otiluke’s freezing sphere is nearly suicidal for example) don’t work well or have serious side effects, though for some reason the cold flame version of fire shield works normally.
What’s left of the page is a little less than half of the book’s discussion of Travel in the Known Plans of Existence. My first impression is that the description of the various planes should have been included in the DMG as well as the Players Handbook which is what is referenced instead of providing any details. This is a generally minor quibble, as the next paragraph or so really encapsulates the sense of wonder that informed Gygax’s writings-
The Known Planes of Existence… offer nearly endless possibilities for AD&D play, although some of these new realms will no longer be fantasy as found in swords & sorcery or myth but verge on that of science fiction, horror, or just about anything else desired. How so? The known planes of existence are a part of the “multiverse”. In the Prime Material Plane are countless suns, planets, galaxies, universes. So too there are endless parallel worlds. What then of the Outer Planes? Certainly, they can be differently populated if not substantially different in form.
Spells, magical devices, artifacts, and relics are known ways to travel to the planes. You can add machines or creatures which will also allow such travel. As far as the universe around your campaign world goes, who is to say that it is not possible to mount a roc and fly to the moon(s)? or perhaps to another planet? Again, are the stars actually suns at a distance? or are they the tiny lights of some vast dome? The hows and wherefores are yours to handle, but more important is what is on the other end of the route.
For those of you who haven’t really thought about it, the so-called planes are your ticket to creativity, and I mean that with a capital C! Everything can be absolutely different, save for those common denominators necessary to the existence of player characters coming to the plane.
Tomorrow: The Known Planes (continued) and Outdoor movement
