Ten Dragon Traits

Sometimes you just have to mix things up a bit. Maybe the PCs are bloody effective at what they do, or maybe they just know all the stats ... whatever the reason, a little variety is always good ;3

Being honest, I could probably better call these "critter traits"; they were written up for dragons but -- with a merest smidge of tweaking, and maybe some thematics -- could be applied to almost any beastie. (I have a sudden terrifying image of a swarm of giant rats ...)

Don't forget to bump the XP awarded appropriately ~!


Roll for a selected trait or simply pick one from the table below. If you're really feeling frisky, roll 1d4 times:

01. Primal Energies: Instead of (or in addition to!) the dragon's breath weapon, its claws and fangs are wreathed in the same damaging forces that compose said breath weapon. Double the damage of these attacks (2d4 instead of 1d4, etc). Appropriate immunities will negate this extra damage.

02. Phaseshift: Every 1d3 rounds the dragon is simply ... not all there, partially fading into some other dimension of existence. Attacks at this time fail 75%; on the upside, the dragon has the same situation.

03. Runic Ablation: Whether an aura of ghostly flame, orbiting glyphs, a transparent, shimmering energy field, glowing channels carved through the scales or most anything else, the dragon has a buffer against damage equal to 1/3 of its hit points. This buffer must be negated before the dragon itself takes damage. Half the instances of such fields affect physical damage, half magical damage.

04. Blood Scion: When reduced to half or less of its hit points, the dragon may produce a blood scion from its spilled life, effectively creating a draconic simulacra resembling a dragon of its type and 1/3 of its Hit Dice. The scion acts as directed by the dragon, lasts for 1 day + a number of days equal to the dragon's Hit Dice, and has a range of 100 miles.

05. Reservoir: Altered by magitech, the dragon bears a oily, slowly-shifting carbuncle mounted in orichalcum and black iron clockwork imbedded in its flesh. The carbuncle contains an additional 1d3 breath weapon uses, regenerating over 48 hours -- and this breath weapon need not match the dragon's own.

06. Life Siphon: The dragon is a psychic vampire, feeding on the pain and injury of those around it. For every four hit points of damage dealt to other creatures within 100' feet of the dragon, the beast regenerates one hit point.

07. Artefact Maestro: The dragon can make use of any and every magic item it may possess, whether warping them (to fit rings on claws, for example) or imbedding them into its scales in order to draw on the item's enchantment. It may expend breath weapon uses instead of using up charges or expending one-use items.

08. Death Curse: Not so useful in combat (unless the dragon has a way of making that impending doom abundantly clear), but a wonderful parting shot. With its dying breath the dragon lays down a major curse on the creatures that ended its life -- DMs, be horribly creative.

09. Master of Nature: All stone/plants/water/flames/more esoteric materials within 1d4+1x100 feet of the dragon may be affected by the beast as if by move earth, stoneform and related spells. Choose one substance, or 1d4 for added malevolence.

10. Godling's Beneficience: The dragon may grant a fraction of its power (a breath weapon equal in damage to its Hit Dice, a half-strength claw attack, a one-shot spell if the dragon has casting ability) to a number of subordinate creatures equal to twice its Hit Dice.

Some Random Potion Tables

... so much for posting more regularly. *facepalms*

Here's a little something I was tinkering around with at work last night, a handful of little tables for generating unusual and/or more detailed potion descriptions.


Potion ...

Colour
1. pomegranate
2. amber
3. colourless
4. inky
5. rosy
6. emerald
7. prismatic
8. roll twice

Appearance
1. opaque
2. pearly
3. swirling
4. quivering
5. translucent
6. bubbled
7. iridescent
8. fizzing

Consistency
1. water
2. thin syrup
3. thick syrup
4. powdery (add water or choke!)
5. sticky
6. gelatinous
7. solid
8. pasty

Smells Like
1. grass
2. sewage
3. honey
4. nothing
5. roses
6. undead
7. bread
8. smoke

Tastes Like
1. bakeapples
2. blood
3. rain
4. seawater
5. peanuts
6. wine
7. bone
8. earth

Contained In
1. crockery jar
2. glass flask
3. small skull
4. rough stone
5. leather skin
6. wax tube
7. metal phial
8. hollow jewel

Label?
1. no
2. accurately
3. falsely
4. accurately (magical)
5. falsely (magical)
6. "belongs to"
7. "made by"
8. changes daily

Magic Item: Earth's Ending

The sun was swallowed whole, and Jie Chue swept swiftly towards his forge as the sun's darkness touched the earth beneath his feet, only to pause as a shadow fell across his own.

Dust-worn and weary the traveller stood, his trials plain and his oaths plainer still; bled dry to his core, betrayer and betrayed against his knowledge. Jie Chue nodded once.

The stranger he gifted with the earth's own darkness and a single breath:

Keep loved ones close, and hated ones closer.


Earth's Ending: This sword is heavy and broad of blade, sharpened on both edges and coming to a blunt point. The blade is forged of one piece with the hilt from a mottled, tawny-bronze alloy and is shot through with silky black marbling along the length of the blade itself. Earth's Ending possesses a simple grip of brown jasper plaques carved with indentations for curled fingers; its quillions are simple, heavy and swept back slightly, its pommel a heavy bronze ring bearing a tassel of tawny leather braids.

Earth's Ending is a two-handed sword +2. Its damage is considered aspected to elemental earth; it inflicts half again its damage against all creatures of the air. At will, the wielder of Earth's Ending may choose to bestow one or more of the blade's bonuses to a companion within 100'; this earthen embrace bestows a bonus to Armour Class equal to twice the blade bonus gifted in the form of a flexible skin of tawny stone, until two turns pass or the the blade's wielder revokes the embrace. When this ability is invoked, the veins of darkness in the sword beat once.

Once the embrace has been bestowed 2-12 times, Earth's Ending promptly erupts in a roiling mass of ink-black energies, engulfing all within a 20' radius of its bearer. This scorched earth inflicts 3-12 hit points of damage on all caught within its reach save for the wielder of Earth's Ending, who instead takes -2 to Strength and Wisdom for twenty-four hours. The count then resets.

Well, might as well make it official.

After once again having not only no interest in posting for months but in fact a visceral aversion to the very idea of posting, I have concluded it is time to officially hang up the hat.

I may be back again; perhaps an official clean break is what I need to feel remotely interested -- or comfortable, for that matter -- with resuming activity once again. But if I'm honest about it, I've been less than enthused for a long, long time; I don't like what I've seen, and been seeing.

And you know what? My gaming-related activities are supposed to be fun.

All this in the blogosphere? Not fun.

The hamster hoard will remain where it is for archival purposes. I said once before that I would never delete my blog to spite others who may be interested in some segment of it, and I'll stand by that. But for the time being an archive is all it will be.

Z: The path of the sun ...

So.

Magical disciplines or schools based on the houses of the zodiac Y/N?

Perhaps with Ophiuchus being the necromantic -- or otherwise unsavoury -- dark horse of the lot?

Y: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Yes, another post so short it's barely a blip on the radar -- awkward letters + awkward time of the work schedule makes for short posts ~

Yesterday I was digging through Anima again and anxiously waiting for the Dominus Exxet book to finally crawl into my FLGS next month. Anima is definitely a happy place for me these days.

Today I was shuffling through my collection of Planescape material while tinkering with some critter notes I have stuffed inside the Red Box. (unfortunately I seem to have forgotten to write down some crucial thought processes and am not entirely sure what all the notes were for. oops.)

Tomorrow might be Anima again, or Planescape ... or I might go pick up that shiny new Shadowrun book that just arrived at the FLGS. Or I might bring Mutants and Masterminds to work instead, seeing as I've been reading a steady diet of the Legion of Super-Heroes for a week.


I don't believe in edition wars.
I don't believe in game wars, either.

X: Xenogears: A Rope Of Robots

I can only hope my games are half so awesome.

No, seriously.





"I did not betray you on purpose! I just decided to ally myself with a group bent on the destruction of everything you have spent your life trying to build! Sometimes people just grow apart!"

W: Watery realms ...

One of these days, I will run an aquatic/undersea/marine-based campaign. Whether the main action is on a scatter of islands with some submarine facets, or primarily under the waves with a bit of activity on the surface -- or, hell, just plunk a campaign in the Plane of Water and be done with it -- it shall be done.

I have an abiding fascination with watery realms and aquatic adventuring, all the better when mixed with ice and snow; I suppose this can be blamed on my native stomping-grounds, but the careless abandon with which I'll mix up my critters, places and even climates probably more resembles a jigsaw of oceanic concepts than anything else. Unfortunately, an aquatic setting is even more specialized than some of the other special campaign types I've bandied about and no one's quite gone for the idea yet.

Hell, I even have a watery/icy world that's something of a slowly budding pet project which would be ideal for a more sci-fantasy sort of game, with periodic hibernatory freezing and other such fun things.

Aah well, back to the musing ...

V: Bloody Vampires ...

Vampires are one of those fictional critters that I've never, ever liked. Not in fiction (especially not in this day and age *twitch*), and not particularly in my roleplaying games either. I'm quite bloodsuckered out, thank you, and I have no desire to change this fact.

(which isn't to say that I don't like tossing around various sorts of blooddrinking, soul-sucking beasties. but they aren't tricked out with the traditional vampire trappings, whether warped or played straight.)

I'd like to blame this on the obsession that many of my cohorts in university had with Vampire: the Masquerade, because that would be the easy answer -- but they were about as interested in every other White Wolf game, and I was and am quite interested in those. But despite a few attempts on my part Vampire left me by and large uninterested except for the spinoff Kindred of the East, which -- being more "ghosts returned from the Hells inhabiting (usually) their own corpse" -- kind of dodged the vampire tropes in any case. It was more entertaining watching the Vampire fans get irked as the local Werewolf player (me) knew their game better than they did than to actually play a vampire.

In other games, vampires still don't do it for me. In D&D anything a vampire can do a well-chosen fiend (usually a baatezu/devil) can do just as well or better; in a more science-fiction game a soul-eating psionic of some kind will fit the bill. I just don't go in for the modern vampire tropes (I'm rather allergic to that particular kind of whining angst), and the old tropes wore thin a long time ago.

U: Undermountain and megadungeons

Some years back I owned the Undermountain boxed set (as well as the second boxed set, but that one sucked so we won't speak of it). It wound up getting sold in a certain situation we shall not talk about and I have a line on acquiring a replacement copy. The thing is, I mostly want it for the reading and the occasional odd inspiration borrowed from a room description, or maybe to crib a cluster of rooms from a section of map to spin my own dungeon from.

I never could -- and still can't -- fathom actually running Undermountain as-is. This has nothing to do with the basic Realmsian nature of the beast (when I had the set I wasn't even touching FR materials in the main; if Undermountain was going anywhere it was, somehow someway, going beneath Sigil), but with the basic nature of the thing.

It's a megadungeon, and I don't do megadungeons.

Not that I have anything against the basic concept, mind you -- sometimes I wonder if I'd had more time as a player and less as the DM, I'd find them more appealing -- but I just don't get megadungeons. They feel like a combination of repetition and randomness that just doesn't appeal to me; I like my killing-and-looting spots to be compact and self-contained, and I don't go for the "bigger is better" route even when I'm not writing microdungeons alllll~ the way at the other end of the scale. Neither does the "mythic underworld"/strange dark limbo-esque concept of a megadungeon fly for me, because I don't fancy the dungeon-as-mythic-underworld trope either.

(why yes, I think those two things likely march hand in glove.)

So when that unspoken time of the weeding of game material hit, Undermountain was on the chopping block. I do miss it, though, because I used to read the big book fairly frequently as game materials go, and if I can replace it I will. Because if there's one thing that it -- and megadungeons in general -- do pull off for me, it's inspiration.