Arkham Friday: Wizard's Tower & Library



from http://www.qcfdesign.com/

  

This is a bit of a repost from a few months ago. I screwed up something and posted just the first entry (of twenty). Now that things are calming down a bit for me on the D&D front, here is the rest of that post.

Something that I've learned since that original post is how these random event tables can be used in a fourthcore game. Even the tables that are mostly beneficial, such as this one, provide that sense of danger, randomness, and reward that makes the fourthcore experience so thrilling. Think of the random event tables in the same way as a pull from the Deck of Many Things, except that these events take place over the course of many hours instead of the few seconds that drawing a card would normally take.

Arkham Friday: The Feywild

In the canon 4^TH Edition literature, authors have often gone to great pains to convince their readers that the Feywild, despite its butterfly-filled nature, is in fact a realm fraught with danger. They mention capricious fey, and Cyclops, and miscellaneous fey beasts. But, really, this is no more dangerous than a trip to any forest in the Points of Light natural world, right? By adding in the following random events, the players and their PC’s are now faced with unpredictable events carrying sometimes devastating results.

Welcome to the Feywild.

THE FEYWILD – Random Event Table (d20)

1              A bored Gnome challenges you to a riddle contest. Make an Intelligence check, Hard DC by Level. On a success, the Gnome leads you to a hidden cache containing gold coins equal to 10 times your Level squared. On a failure, the Gnome casts a cruel spell on you and you start the next combat encounter blinded (save ends).

2              A squat little Fairie joins your party and offers its services as your guide. Roll a d20. On a 9 or less, have a random event in The Abyss. On a roll of 10 or higher, have a random event in The Icy Wastes of Latherna.

3              You find yourself reliving a moment in your past that you have always regretted, only this time everything goes as well as you could ever hope. Gain 1 Healing Surge.

4              At the south gate of Taer Lian Doresh, you are stopped by a red-robed sentry until you can tell three dreams beyond belief. If the Dungeon Master does not approve of your three dreams, roll a Saving Throw. On a success, or if the Dungeon Master does approve of your dreams, you are treated to a tour the golden spires of Taer Lian Doresh and you gain a permanent +1 item bonus to Arcana and History checks. On a failure, your mind is made captive of the evil Fey of the Dream World, and you take a -5 penalty to Will until you reach your next Milestone.

5              A noble herd of centaur bandits descend upon you in a stampede! They attack: + Level + 3 vs. Reflex; on a hit, you take Normal High damage by Level and you lose gold coins equal to 10 times your Level squared.

6              Cresting the hill, you come across a sight that is intended only for you, and it fills your heart with joy. Describe it to the other players. Gain 1 Healing Surge or remove one failed Death Saving Throw. 

7              Hearing a loud flapping noise from above, you press yourself into the shadows of the forest to escape the notice of its green dragon guardian. Make a Stealth check, Moderate DC by Level. On a success, the dragon does not notice you and drops a scroll nearby with a ritual of your choice equal to your Level or lower. On a failure, you are attacked by its breath weapon: + Level + 3 vs. Fortitude; Limited acid damage by Level and you start the next combat encounter with ongoing 5 acid damage per Tier (save ends).

8              You cross the valley of Pnoth, where the purple worms crawl and burrow incessantly. You hear a slithering among the mountains. Make a Stealth check, Moderate DC by Level, to avoid the notice of the horrid beasts. On a failure, you are attacked by the worm’s terrible stinger: + Level + 5 vs. Armor Class; Normal High damage and Normal High poison damage by Level.

9              It's lovely here, and perfect... so perfect you might stay forever. Make an Insight check, Easy DC by Level. On a success, gain 1 Healing Surge. On a failure, you are can never be taken away from this place, and are lost to the Fey forever.

10           The Elven King of Mithrendain would like a souvenir from your “natural” world. Describe what trinket your character gives to the king and make a Diplomacy check, Moderate DC by Level. On a success, the king rewards you for your generosity and presents to you 1 consumable magic item of your choice of equal to your Level or lower. On a failure, the king is angered and proclaims that you are no longer welcomed by the Fey. Take a permanent -5 penalty to all Charisma-based skill checks with creatures with the Fey origin.

11           Maybe you shouldn't have eaten that strangely-colored fruit. Make an Endurance check, Moderate DC by Level, to keep your lunch. On a failure, lose 1d4 Healing Surges.

12           Others' nightmares are not meant to be witnessed, even indirectly. Lose 1d4 Healing Surges from the horrors you have witnessed in the dream city of Taer Lian Doresh.

13           The ground begins to crack open as an invading force from the Underdark begins their assault on the surface world! Make an Athletics check, Moderate DC by Level, to jump to safety. On a failure, you fall into the chasm and take Limited damage by Level. On a critical miss, you are swallowed by the yawning earth and lost in the Feydark forever.

14           The tormented ghosts of lost Cendriane grope and grasp at your flesh as you run through the city in terror. They attack: + Level + 3 vs. Will; Normal High necrotic damage and Normal High psychic damage by Level.

15           The light of the moon seems to bend and twist the night around you into fearsome shapes, which attack your mind: + Level + 3 vs. Will; Normal High psychic damage by Level.

16           The cackling of the Harlequinade, an evil troupe of Gnomish court jesters, echoes in your ears and threatens to drive you mad. It attacks you: + Level + 3 vs. Will (fear); Normal High psychic damage by Level and you grant combat advantage to all attackers. You may make a saving throw at the end of each combat encounter to end this effect.

17           The fey panther claws at you as it appears and reappears from out of thin air. It catches you by surprise and makes an attack: + Level + 7 vs. Armor Class; Normal Moderate damage by Level.

18           The stone gateway protecting the Feywild from the depths of the Underdark is covered in runes that reveal to you one of the deepest secrets of the Fey. If you speak the Elven language, make an Arcana check, Hard DC by Level, to decipher the words. On a success, you gain a Warlock (Fey) Utility spell of your choice to use until you take your next Extended Rest, equal to your Level or lower.

19           Time passes differently in the Feywild, and you've needed to learn a few things to survive. Gain a permanent +1 item bonus to a skill of your choice.

20           While wandering the phosphorescent woods, you are surrounded by mischievous sprites! Make a Bluff check, Moderate DC by Level, to show them a riddle or trick and befriend them. On a success, they take a liking to you and give you a gourd of moon-tree wine, which functions as a potion of your choice of your Level + 3 or lower. On a failure, the sprites close in around you, their teeth gleaming, and attack: + Level + 5 vs. Armor Class; Normal Moderate damage and you start your next combat encounter dazed (save ends).

Arham Friday: The Icy Wastes of Latherna

Latherna is overseen closely by the Raven Queen's guardians of Winter, and has close ties with the realm of the Frost Prince in the Feywild. It is a horrid and lonely place where life goes to become numb to the world and die. It's icy plateau's are endless in both size and cruelty.

I based this location on The Plateau of Leng.

Arkham Friday: Sunderheart

The Shadowrealm holds more secrets than all other planes combined. Its fabric is mystery. Its nature is to disguise. Hidden in the endless gloom of the plane lurk domains of dread—dark realms of tragedy and horror that draw victims down in circles of destruction. Few know of these places, for few ever escape. One such is Sunderheart. Called 'The Funeral City', Sunderheart is a necropolis filled with the mindless dead and watched over by malevolent spirits with god-like powers.

This table also works pretty well with Orcus’ domain of Thanatos, or any really nasty, evil place full of undead. Random Event #14 is my personal favorite. It’s pretty Fourthcore, potentially tricking you into switching your primary stat bonuses to Dex and Con, which would be devastating for a lot of characters out there.

Arkham Friday: The Sunken City of Moil

The sunken city of Moil is a dread chain of islands located in the bleak seas of the Shadowfell. The city harbors the tormented souls of all those lost at sea, as well as the inhuman and alien minds of fallen aquatic creatures from ages past. The waters around this group of small islands are clouded black by an unending stream of filth, liquified bodies and decaying matter. For miles around the air is thick with the stench of rot.

Heroes brave enough to face these perils, or fools stupid enough to venture here, face one of the most revolting locations in the multiverse, surrounded by a freezing cold, unending sea of diseased, putrid water.

Arkham Friday: Lost Io'vanthor

This Arkham Friday is inspired by the (now old) Dragon article about the lost city of the Dragonborn, Io'vanthor. Reading that article back in Two Thousand Aught Eight, I was inspired by the descriptions contained within. However, I always felt that the mechanics were lacking. It was no fault of the author, whom I'm sure wouldn't have been allowed to create something more substantial due to page count limitations. But there was this disconnect, as often there is, between the fiery imagination of the Dungeon Master who reads all these great descriptions from published adventures and DDi articles, and the player who only experiences snippets of that majestic world. It's a puzzle of the entire hobby. How to get the players to feel like they're experiencing this wondreful world that you have in mind, yet at the same time avoiding turning the game into "Storytime with Uncle Dungeon Master".

But, I digress.

Here are the unveiled horrors of the devastated Arkhosian city, left bare and rotting for your enjoyment.

Arkham Friday: Mountainous Wilderness

The hills are filled with deadly rock slides, opportunistic scavengers, and crazed hillbillys. The area also contains helpful old prespectors, hedge wizards, and archeologists. Merchant caravans can be assaulted, and saved, along the roadside. Dangerous animals scratch out a living on the hard rock.

This is the mountainous wilderness. If your group of D&D adventurers are true heroes, the typical mundane hazards (that are not intended to be part of the greater story and plot) are trivial. It doesn't make sense to run an encounter of attacking mountain lions when the heroes are accustomed to slaying hideous Far Realm aberrations, dragons, and god-like beings. Instead, spice up your adventures and wilderness exploration with the following chart:

Arham Friday: The Docks & River

These random events are great for a stroll down to the seedy parts of a generic medieval fantasy town, such as Fallcrest. There's quite a bit of money to be made here, by finding lost cargo crates, and a good amount of friends to be found as well. Also, you might get yourself a small boat; what fun!

The thing enjoyed the most out of writing this Random Event table was the way I converted gaining items in Arkham Horror to a D&D equivalent. You'll see this by the events that have the line "gain 1 consumable magic item of your level or less". I feel like I can hand out consumable magic items (potions, etc.) pretty willy-nilly and not upset the balance of play in he game much, but will still provide a lot of flavor and interesting options for the players.

Arkham Friday: The Tavern

Expanding a bit from the terror-inducing vistas of The Abyss and The Shadowfell, I wanted to take some inspiration from Arkham Horror and apply it to a D&D locale so common that it has become cliche: The Tavern.

The tavern random events are much more tame and forgiving compared to the other Arkham Horror tables. It's a place of rest after a hard day's work plundering forgotten tombs, a safe haven; and so I've skewed the table to have less dire consequences, and more positive outcomes as a whole.

Still, I think this is a fun way to throw some quirky, non-combat fun at your adventurers. My suggestion would be to throw in a single random event every time the PCs bed down for the night at a common tavern or inn. Like all of the Arkham Horror tables, the events described here can sometimes be a little sparse in the details. That's where the individual Dungeon Master must step in and make it their own, providing the details that are specific to your imagined world.

Arkham Friday - The Great Library of Vor Kragal

The tiefling empire once spanned thousands of miles and served as a testament to the power of its devil-bound overlords. The tainted masters of countless empires ruled from Vor Kragal, their seat of power. Vor Kragal pulsed with the terrifying might to break the souls of kings, and its markets flowed with the treasures of a hundred worlds. The secrets of life everlasting and the power to touch the face of the gods were all as commonplace to the tieflings of old as irrigating crops or erecting a simple stone wall is to those living in our current age. Precious few peices of their once-great libraries exist, tempting foolish adventurers of the current age. Such knowledge that is contained within; for even a glimpse of it, a person might trade his soul. Now, though, the ruins of Vor Kragal are merely an ashen landscape, riddled with volcanic eruptions and earth-rending sinkholes that unknown terrors call home.

Arkham Friday: Gloomwrought

GLOOMWROUGHT, DEMENSE OF MAD SORCERERS – Random Event Table (d20)

One of the brightest lights in the gloom of the Shadowfell, Gloomwrought is a large walled port city on the shores of the Stormy Seas. Surrounded by a perilous bog called the Skins, most travelers enter the city by way of dark one ferrymen who navigate the Skins, by magical portal, or by ship.

Prince Roland the Deathless is lord of the city, but real power is in the bony, decrepit hands of the mysterious custodians of the city known as the Keepers, a cabal of powerful necromancers whom have discarded their bodies to pursue of an unnatural afterlife of willful undeath.

Arkham Friday: Time Travel

The first post of the series can be found here.

The next installemnt in my Arkham Friday series is Time Travel. Use this chart when your PCs are haplessly manipulating the strands of fate, or when they're thrown into a temporal vortex! Epic adventurers can be made worthy of their title by the kinds of craziness found in these random encounter tables. The table itself has a mix of good and bad, although like any other Arkham Horror inspired item, it's going to be more bad than good.

This is definitely a table I am excited about and am actively looking for ways of using in my home games. And certainly, it fits the theme of this blog. Is not time travel truly an action the rules do not cover?

Arkham Friday: The Abyss

Welcome to the start of a new series here at DMG p.42, called Arkham Friday.

Each Friday for the nex few weeks, I'll be taking an element from Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror and applying it to D&D 4E. One of the ways in which games evolve and grow is by seeing what other  games in other platforms have done well, and taking ideas from that. Thus, I'd like to examine what Arkham Horror has done well, and see if that can't be used to add new depth, immersion, or excitement into the D&D game.

Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game based on the Cthulhu Mythos in which 1920's era investogators gather weapons and clues, and travel to unimaginable alien vistas to defeat the mind-numbing horrors from beyond before the world is torn asunder. I highly recommend it if you've never given it a try. It's a great way to break up your gaming schedule a bit; and since it's entirely cooperative, it allows your group's usual Dungeon Master a chance to rub elbows with the rest of the table.

One of the hallmark's of this game is it's excessive deadliness. Since you're not playing against the other people at the table, the game's challenge comes from it's sheer difficulty. Many times, you will have a series of misfotunes happen to an investigator in succession. Often, they will be progressively worse; for example, your investigator can easily have to make an impossible skill check, become cursed, fight a hideous monster for absolutley no benefit other than to not die, become corrupted, gain a greivous injury, inexplicably lose the majority of their sanity, develop a major psychosis (madness), become lost in time and space, and then, finally, devoured. All in the span of 1 turn. For this reason, Arkham Horror is a "must buy" item for any FourthCore Dungeon Masters. If you like what you see in these Arkham Friday posts, be sure to check out Sersa V's excellent blog, Save Versus Death. The brutality of his world will make your players weep.

This first Arkham post is a random encounter table. Bear with me, as this is not your usual means of banality in rolling for a random monsters. This is a random encounter list of things that happens whilst your player characters explore the unrelenting horrors of The Abyss. A lot of hot air is given out when trying to advise Dungeon Masters on how to handle and describe Epic tier encounters. "Turn it to 11" and other cliches abound from the experts, but hard and fast rules are few and far between. There is precious little mechanical support to get across the feel of a higher tier adventure. You can increase all the math to match the level of the party, and you can call "gold coins" by "astral diamonds"; but it's still the same feeling to everything. I suggest, when your PC's visit a truly horrific location (as is their wont in the higher Tiers), have each of them roll a d20 and consult the chart below for the effects. You can have them do this once upon arrival, or everytime they venture through the wilds of this alien landscape, or as much as between every encounter. That depends on exactly how FourthCore you really are. Don't let some of the seemingly harsh penalties here dissuade you. If you're rolling in Epic tier, the PC's should be able to easily shrug off anything, including arbitrary character death at the expense of a single botched die roll. I'd also implement the rule that if an effect forces your character to lose a Healing Surge and you are at 0 Healing Surges, the character simply dies. Other have slightly saucier dispositions.