Re: The Spider God's Bride - Re-write DONE, FINISHED!

Othbanes
Master Embalmer and Corrupt Priest, Male Susrahnite

Value
STR 12
CON 14
SIZ 13
INT 14
POW 12
DEX 13
CHA 10

1D20 Hit Location AP/HP
1-3 Right Leg –/6
4-6 Left Leg –/6
7-9 Abdomen –/7
10-12 Chest –/8
13-15 Right Arm –/5
16-18 Left Arm –/5
19-20 Head –/6


Combat Actions 3 Armour: None
Damage Modifier 0
Magic Points 12 Traits: None
Movement 8m
Strike Rank +14

Common Skills: Athletics 45%, Brawn 35%, Culture (Own) 88%, Dance 43%, Drive 35%, Evade 66%, Evaluate 54%, First Aid 37%, Influence 60%, Insight 61%, Lore (Regional) 83%, Perception 56%, Persistence 64%, Resilience 58%, Ride 45%, Sing 32%, Sleight 33%, Stealth 37%, Swim 36%, Unarmed 35%
Advanced Skills: Courtesy 64%, Language (Native) 74%, Lore (Funerary Rites) 88%, Language (Ghoulspeak) 64%, Oratory 42%
Magic Skills: Grimoire 73% , Manipulation 76%
Spells (7): Animate (Bone), Animate (Dead flesh), Attract (Harm), Hinder, Palsy, Smother, Tap (CON)

Weapons
Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Dagger - M L 1D4+1, Bleed, Impale 6/8
Combat Styles
Dagger 70%

Possessions: Clothing, dagger, 24 SP. Othbanes also carries a few grisly things on his person, a severed finger which he can use to tempt ghouls. A small box with a tiny heart inside and a pair of rings made from human bone (from a sacrificial victim).
Description: Dressed in purple and silver robes, with a green jade skull-mask. Othbanes deals with the ghouls that haunt the catacombs of Belthaar, and he knows of several secret tunnels beneath the city. The ghouls bring items pilfered from the tombs to Othbanes, while he keeps the locations of their lairs secret.
Tactics: Othbanes will trade the information about the secret tunnels for his life if he is in mortal danger.
Notes: Othbanes command of the undead comes from his unique ability to communicate with the ghouls, who he treats with respect and understanding. To him they are more than soldiers and tools, they are odd friends. If Games Masters want a more traditional evil necromancer type, then there are various rulesets beyond the core book which deal with necromancy and the undead.
 
The Wolf said:
This is the first shot on the Keepers, bear in mind we're on the first adventure only and things are ramping up slowly. The Keepers are level 1 sorcerers in the original and they have several illusionary magics at their command. To this end I've given them slightly less in the way of combat skill, but beefed up a few things I thought they would have.

Common Skills: Athletics 47%, Brawn 35%, Culture (Own) 39%, Dance 34%, Drive 26%, Evade 62%, Evaluate 37%, First Aid 40%, Influence 44%, Insight 39%, Lore (Regional) 47%, Perception 58%, Persistence 42%, Resilience 53%, Ride 39%, Sing 27%, Sleight 35%, Stealth 40%, Swim 32%, Unarmed 51%
Advanced Skills: Courtesy 40%, Language (Native) 75%, Lore (Theology) 60%, Language (Other GM’s choice) 35%
Magic Skills: Grimoire 60% , Manipulation 57%
Spells (5): Phantom Sense (sight), Phantom Sense (sound), Phantom Sense (touch), Palsy, Castback

Combat Styles
Quarterstaff 65%
Again this looks much more like something I would expect so my only comments now are matters of opinion. With the caveat that I don't have the original SGB (I was waiting to buy Legend version...)
Unless their background actually features combat training then I think their combat skills are too high. Frex, when I was doing Blood of Orlanth for RQII I used a spreadsheet to generate culture and profession skill bonus then a fairly standard skill bonus template based on starting "level". Probably then I would give them STR+DEX+10% in combat and STR+DEX only in unarmed.

Their sorcery skills look pretty good to me for decent apprentices. Note that Palsy will affect a max of 6 HPs which makes it a threat against most PCs except for tanks.

Their characteristics look wrong unless they are meant to be beefy combat types. I do see that their stats add up to 79 which puts them on a par with starting PCs but it seems odd to have high combat stats and Charisma. Again though, these might be beefy combat magicians who dress up as ghouls and play boo...
 
The Keepers in the d20 SGB stats (as in their attributes) have been modelled on the original d20 document. The way they're described in d20 SGB is that they're basically sorcerers who observe the funeral rites of the god. Of course I've taken the feedback that the originals in SGB Legend were weak, we're near the end of the adventure now with the Keepers, so these guys shouldn't really be a pushover at all (I feel).

I see them as combat priests who play boo when they don't want to get into a fight.

d20 has them as: Str 13, Dex 13, Con 11, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 13 for example. I may have bogged up the maths on the conversions, but I don't think I did. I'm using Prime_Evil's guidelines because I figure this will at least be as close as I can get it to the originals in the d20.

Othbanes is tougher and expect the High Priest to be pretty badass. Since that seemed to be the big beef with the original Legend version of the book. I think someone made a comment earlier on in the thread about the guards being weak compared to a lot of PCs.

I am thinking along these lines. Guards are often rank and file, so they're weaker. They're at the start of the adventure. These Keepers are near the end so I'd expect as a GM to ramp up the challenge if you take each adventure as a single and not part of a huge campaign.

So the High Priest is your big bad human boss at the end.
 
Deleriad said:
The Wolf said:
Again this looks much more like something I would expect so my only comments now are matters of opinion. With the caveat that I don't have the original SGB (I was waiting to buy Legend version...)
Unless their background actually features combat training then I think their combat skills are too high. Frex, when I was doing Blood of Orlanth for RQII I used a spreadsheet to generate culture and profession skill bonus then a fairly standard skill bonus template based on starting "level". Probably then I would give them STR+DEX+10% in combat and STR+DEX only in unarmed.

Their sorcery skills look pretty good to me for decent apprentices. Note that Palsy will affect a max of 6 HPs which makes it a threat against most PCs except for tanks.

Their characteristics look wrong unless they are meant to be beefy combat types. I do see that their stats add up to 79 which puts them on a par with starting PCs but it seems odd to have high combat stats and Charisma. Again though, these might be beefy combat magicians who dress up as ghouls and play boo...
I think the characteristics are OK tbh, in the original they have the same (d20 equivalent) stats (as well as Improved Initiative and Toughness feat), which would characterise them as 'beefy' as you say. Regarding the CHA, consider they are also illusionists, so some ability to deceive seems natural.

I think there is a point to be made that 65% combat skill is a little high. The d20 Keepers are quite weak in melee, personally I would also lean towards a 45%ish level of skill at most with their staves. As a sidenote, I don't see the case for giving them the Castback spell.

As Deleriad said though, this is mostly opinion, and as you know any x number of role-players have at least x^2 sensible but different opinions, so go with what feels right for the adventure!
 
I figure that if I can at least get this (mostly) write Dan, Deleriad, we'll have a better book for it and you guys will enjoy it more. Also, you can pretty much change the stats on the fly if you feel that they're too weak/powerful since it'll be 100% Legend compatible and hopefully not missing the correct stats/skills.

I dropped Castback and gave it Othbanes instead. (about a few hours ago) - I have also dropped their staff skill down too. I made a bit of a tweak in the text which explains they have a bit more combat training than most priests. I like the idea that the priests of a Sword and Sorcery world are essentially combat sorcerers, especially in the Necromancer's Knife. I don't want to deviate from the original flavour of Xoth of course, but these little changes/descriptive bits add some more flavour to an already superb set of adventures.

I want to fix that side of SGB as well.

Keepers now have:

Spells (4): Phantom Sense (sight), Phantom Sense (sound), Phantom Sense (touch), Palsy

Quarterstaff 47%

I have also looked at Kuri-Ussar just before lunch. There's a huge chunk of his tactics missing from the Legend version... I can see what you guys mean in the review now. (bear in mind I didn't have the d20 book at all - nor have I seen the Legend SGB pdf).

So expect Kuri to reflect his d20 counterpart and be a much nastier opponent for it. He will have a high skill in his scimitar since he knows how to use it. I'll also re-work in those tiny black venemous scorpions.

They will actually function like a weapon I think. Probably ranged since it mentions he likes to throw them. I won't have room to writeup a tiny scorpion monster, but I can certainly add in a text about using them against PCs.
 
Hmmm....is it possible to give a couple of different ratings for key skills so that GMs can decide how tough they want the opposition to be based upon the needs of their group? Having the weaker version as the standard version and then adding a brief note telling the GM how to scale up each NPC for seasoned adventurers might be another option...
 
That's something I have planned for my own releases if I write an adventure or two for Legend, Prime_Evil. Not something I can do for this conversion though, it is a solid idea which I'll keep in mind for definite.

I'd be tempted to put a note at the start of a book like that which says, here are some NPCs...these are set at this difficulty level. If you need tougher opponents, throw 10%-15% extra to the major skills and 2-5% to the minor. Conversely if you need weaker foes, reverse the numbers.

I'd rather get the skills as close as I can on this run-through since this is a huge task. Then if they do need to be tweaked, they can be tweaked afterwards :)
 
The Wolf said:
I'll also re-work in those tiny black venemous scorpions.

They will actually function like a weapon I think. Probably ranged since it mentions he likes to throw them. I won't have room to writeup a tiny scorpion monster, but I can certainly add in a text about using them against PCs.

Way I would do that in as simple a way as possible is
Combat style: mad as a box of frogs (... thrown scorpion)
weapon thrown scorpion: does no damage but if it hits with a degree of success then instead of getting a combat maneuver the target gets injected with scorpion venom in the location struck.
 
I like that.

Would treating the thrown scorpion as a weapon work do you think like this?

Combat Style: Hurl Scorpion 55%

Weapons
Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Scorpion 15m T - 1D2, Poison 0/1

I'd also be tempted to put in the scorpion venom as a poison (so you can play with it outside of the adventure)

The way it describes him in d20, is that literally he picks up a scorpion as his combat action and hurls it, if it hits, the victim takes a small amount of damage and gets poison damage too.
 
There was an episode of Charmed (second season) where a Egyptian Vase was guarded by a queen of some sort. She commanded scorpians, spiders and the like.

If anyone STOLE the item (passing it along through sale etc was fine) she would appear and take a Scorpian or Spider or wahtever off her garments where they were ornaments. They would become alive and she would place them on the thief who would then be stung/bitten and die painfully.



Just as a side-thought ;)
 
Bifford said:
There was an episode of Charmed (second season) where a Egyptian Vase was guarded by a queen of some sort. She commanded scorpions, spiders and the like.

If anyone STOLE the item (passing it along through sale etc was fine) she would appear and take a Scorpian or Spider or wahtever off her garments where they were ornaments. They would become alive and she would place them on the thief who would then be stung/bitten and die painfully.

Just as a side-thought ;)

It's interesting how spiders and scorpions always turn up eventually in pulp fiction.

I've always thought that having a villain who can take one or more normal scorpions and use magic to expand them into giant scorpions would be awesome in a swords and sorcery game - the concept has a Ray Harryhausen vibe to me :)
 
The Wolf said:
Would treating the thrown scorpion as a weapon work do you think like this?

Combat Style: Hurl Scorpion 55%

Weapons
Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Scorpion 15m T - 1D2, Poison 0/1
I think this makes sense, though I would reduce damage down to 1 or zero (I picture an ordinary-size scorpion, and realistically they cannot seriously harm a human with their physical attacks).
Consider that the scorpions will fail to pierce even light armour in normal circumstances. so I would add as Deleriad says that with a combat maneuver the scorpion has found a weak spot in armour and injected his poison.
I'd also be tempted to put in the scorpion venom as a poison (so you can play with it outside of the adventure).
I think the Scorpion venom would have to be somewhere in the text, if only to know what it does!

You mentioned earlier on that you had to replace the standard Legend poison descriptions with a flat Resilience roll because they take too much space. I would seriously consider some way to make them fit however, if only to ensure compatibility with the core book.

I think a concise format for the poison might work. You can trust GMs to figure it out with the Legend book. For example Scorpion poison from Monster Coliseum:

App: Inj. Onset: 1d3 Rounds. Dur: 1d3 Days. Time: Daily. POT: 40 vs. Resilience. Cond.: Agony & Nausea. Cure: Heal skill, Magic.

Incidentally, currently there are three poisons in the full Legend format in the PDF (p. 28, 83, 100). Whichever format you go with you may have to change those.

PS: I like what I'm seeing so far. Appreciate your openness and efforts.
 
Tactics: Kuri-Ussar delights in using his scimitar against weak enemies. However, he is no fool and does not attack heavily armed foes, instead using minions against such opponents. Kuri-Ussar uses his magic to its best effect; he debilitates foes and then moves in to rip them apart with his scimitar. He also has a special trick he likes to use against his enemies, since he keeps small poisonous scorpions (8) in cages around his lair. At any time in combat he can pick one of these up and use a Combat Action to hurl it at a character.
This tiny scorpion has 1HP and may well die when thrown (70% chance). It is treated like a weapon for the purpose of this adventure. If Kuri-Ussar manages to hit with his Combat Manoeuvre it is considered that the scorpion has found a weak point in the target’s armour and now the victim needs to resist the poison.
Weapons
Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Scorpion 15m T - Poison (Special) 0/1

I haven't formulated the poison yet, but thanks RangerDan. I appreciate the support of the forum and the Legend fanbase in this.
 
Ok, this will be the last thing I post about the poison - but I feel putting the scorpions back in and making a venom like this is a good step to restoring the flavour of the original SGB.

Scorpion Venom
This toxin is quite dangerous and since these are tiny scorpions, their venom is more potent than the larger variety having been bred by Kuri-Ussar to be a stronger variant. It is not fatal usually, but can cause numbness of limbs, nausea and in some rare cases death.
Application: Injection
Onset time: Nausea after 1D2 minutes (due to potency), Paralysis after 2D6 minutes.
Duration: 1 hour
Resistance Time: The victim must make a Resistance roll at the Onset Time of each poison stage. Failure indicates that Condition has taken effect.
Potency: 80
Resistance Resilience
Conditions: Nausea, Paralysis, Death (very rare). The venom causes the victim to start feeling sick, they begin to shiver and may well vomit for 1D3 minutes sporadically. If the second Resistance roll is failed then the location affected (chosen randomly) begins to suffer paralysis. If the second Resistance roll is critically failed then there is a 5% chance the target will die.
Antidote/Cure: Anti-venom. Kuri has the required anti-venom on his person which can counteract his specially bred scorpion venoms. The anti-venom must be introduced using a successful First Aid or Healing test. The anti-venom’s Potency is 70 and it is added to the victim’s Resilience test to help them fight off the effects of the venom throughout its duration.

Plus, you can take this stuff and try it out at your gaming tables :)
 
Prime_Evil said:
Bifford said:
There was an episode of Charmed (second season) where a Egyptian Vase was guarded by a queen of some sort. She commanded scorpions, spiders and the like.

If anyone STOLE the item (passing it along through sale etc was fine) she would appear and take a Scorpian or Spider or wahtever off her garments where they were ornaments. They would become alive and she would place them on the thief who would then be stung/bitten and die painfully.

Just as a side-thought ;)

It's interesting how spiders and scorpions always turn up eventually in pulp fiction.

I've always thought that having a villain who can take one or more normal scorpions and use magic to expand them into giant scorpions would be awesome in a swords and sorcery game - the concept has a Ray Harryhausen vibe to me :)

Just for you in my own S&S adventure, I will actually write this!
 
Here he is, the big bad guy at the end of Necromancer's Knife (apart from the Haunt, which I think largely looks OK) (Matt might have done that guy).

Kuri-Ussar (Page XX)
Chief Priest, Male Susrahnite

Value
STR 14
CON 13
SIZ 14
INT 15
POW 13
DEX 12
CHA 14

1D20 Hit Location AP/HP
1-3 Right Leg –/6
4-6 Left Leg –/6
7-9 Abdomen –/7
10-12 Chest –/8
13-15 Right Arm –/5
16-18 Left Arm –/5
19-20 Head –/6

Combat Actions 3 Armour: None
Damage Modifier +1D2
Magic Points 13 Traits: None
Movement 8m
Strike Rank +14

Common Skills: Athletics 46%, Brawn 58%, Culture (Own) 70%, Dance 31%, Drive 30%, Evade 64%, Evaluate 69%, First Aid 57%, Influence 88%, Insight 63%, Lore (Regional) 85%, Perception 48%, Persistence 66%, Resilience 56%, Ride 45%, Sing 47%, Sleight 46%, Stealth 47%, Swim 47%, Unarmed 46%
Advanced Skills: Courtesy 69%, Healing 58%, Language (Native) 89%, Lore (Funerary Rites) 90%, Language (Ghoulspeak) 49%, Meditation 46%, Oratory 67%
Magic Skills: Grimoire 75% , Manipulation 70%
Spells (9): Attract (Harm), Damage Resistance, Holdfast, Palsy, Protective Ward, Spell Resistance, Tap (STR), Tap (CON), Wrack

Weapons
Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Scimitar - M L 1D8, Bleed 6/10

Combat Styles
Scimitar 70%, Hurl Scorpion 65%

Possessions: Clothing, scimitar, 43 SP. 8 black scorpions in cages around Kuri’s lair. Kuri also has 3 doses of anti-venom in tiny phials in a small pouch.
Description: The chief priest of the temple wears purple robes with gold trim and wears a golden skull-mask. Behind the mask is an unwholesome and ugly face, and an unpleasant personality to match, for Kuri-Ussar lusts after the dead.
Tactics: Kuri-Ussar delights in using his scimitar against weak enemies. However, he is no fool and does not attack heavily armed foes, he prefers to employ cunning in those cases. Kuri-Ussar uses his magic to its best effect; he debilitates foes and then moves in to rip them apart with his scimitar. If he’s given a chance to prepare in combat, he will cast any protective magic prior to battle and move to a defensible position.
He also has a special trick he likes to use against his enemies, since he keeps small poisonous scorpions (8) in cages around his lair. At any time in combat he can pick one of these up and use a Combat Action to hurl it at a character. This tiny scorpion has 1HP and may well die when thrown (70% chance). It is treated like a weapon for the purpose of this adventure. If Kuri-Ussar manages to hit with his Combat Style it is considered that the scorpion has found a weak point in the target’s armour and now the victim needs to resist the poison.

Type Range Size Reach Damage AP/HP
Scorpion 15m T - Poison (Special) 0/1

Scorpion Venom
This toxin is quite dangerous and since these are tiny scorpions, their venom is more potent than the larger variety having been bred by Kuri-Ussar to be a stronger variant. It is not fatal usually, but can cause numbness of limbs, nausea and in some rare cases death.
Application: Injection
Onset time: Nausea after 1D2 minutes (due to potency), Paralysis after 2D6 minutes.
Duration: 1 hour
Resistance Time: The victim must make a Resistance roll at the Onset Time of each poison stage. Failure indicates that Condition has taken effect.
Potency: 80
Resistance Resilience
Conditions: Nausea, Paralysis, Death (very rare). The venom causes the victim to start feeling sick, they begin to shiver and may well vomit for 1D3 minutes sporadically. If the second Resistance roll is failed then the location affected (chosen randomly) begins to suffer paralysis. If the second Resistance roll is critically failed then there is a 5% chance the target will die.
Antidote/Cure: Anti-venom. Kuri has the required anti-venom on his person which can counteract his specially bred scorpion venom. The anti-venom must be introduced using a successful First Aid or Healing test. The anti-venom’s Potency is 70 and it is added to the victim’s Resilience test to help them fight off the effects of the venom throughout its duration.

O===((========>

Design notes: well there are a lot of reasons I gave him these skills/abilities and spells. They're mainly how I see him in my mind's eye when I'm running the adventure in my head. He represents the archetypical evil sorcerous priest in a mask, throwing his minions (and scorpions) against the heroes. Using debiltation magic and throwing their bodies into intense agony with Wrack. He has spent some time with the dead, like Othbanes, so he can speak to ghouls and has a knowledge of the rites of death.

I've knocked down some of the Keeper's magic skills previously, so don't worry if he seems weaker compared to them (in this thread) they've changed since that post.

Darren
 
It might be worth revisiting how religions/cults are converted and how culture-religion-occupation work together. For example if your priests are sorcerers you can treat their grimoires as a cult secret of the god Yadar:
Grimoire of Death and secrets 75%
Instead of awarding special skills to cult worshippers you can use cults to confer a specific set (or sets) of grimoires with some spells exclusive to that cult. In this sense a 'grimoire' isn't necessarily a book or a scroll but a kind of magical canon directly tied to a cult.

A necromancer like Xul might be squirreling away rare spells in his own grimoire outside of any cult, which is why copies of his lost grimoires hidden in the crypt might be valuable/sort after/forbidden/a target for destruction/plunder.

Yadar, the Lord of Death and Secrets
The mysterious high god of the Khazistanis,
Yadar, is said to live in the desert and to collect
the souls of every living man and woman when
they give up their final breath.

Yadar is associated with scorpions and bats.


So the scorpion-chucking Kuri-Ussar seems less insane when it's clear that the scorpion is a cult animal.

On combat styles - you can use them as part of a cultural background, and especially allow grouping of skills which fit into martial regime, eg. (from Pavis Rises):
Sun Dome Templar (Spear, Shield. Pike, Sword, Bow): 79%
When I converted Jahwar’s Thugs I gave them a "Thuggery" combat style which covered any weapon and actions they would use in a street fight.
 
That is great, I also spoke to Loz and he is liking what he's seen so far ... so phew :) seal of approval there.

That is kind of neat actually with the Combat Styles. It certainly does make for a more interesting flavour. I'm not sure what Matt would make of it, but I do like it. I would certainly do that for any NPCs I had in my own S&S (or other) adventures.

Expect the gods/religion chapter to be totally re-written as I have done with magic. I had plans to make the gods less of a club and more flavour (using the Xoth information from d20 SGB) - fingers crossed I can make this fun/interesting.

I am certainly going to see if I can get away with changing the CS to fit that kind of flavour. I love the idea of Jahwar's thugs having somethiing like Thuggery (sword, club, dagger, unarmed): 62%

So the special skills will definitely be gone - I may actually be able to use the word space to make some exclusive spells indeed. Perhaps even the transform scorpion one that Prime_Evil was talking about. Thank you very much for the idea/commentary!

Darren
 
So I was thinking on the whole re-write of certain aspects of cults/gods/demons and I want to keep the original work from SGB as much as possible.

Yadar, the Lord of Death and Secrets
The mysterious high god of the Khazistanis, Yadar, is said to live in the desert and to collect the souls of every living man and woman when they give up their final breath.
Yadar is associated with scorpions and bats. Many carry charms and amulets in the image of Yadar, said to ward against disease and violent death.
Such worship is often personal and unorganized, since the locations of Yadar’s temples are generally kept secret and known only to the priests. The cult is suspected to have subterranean shrines in cities; and temples in desert ruins. The nomads stay well away from such ruins, since any who stray too close disappear without a trace.
Initiation: To be initiated into the cult of Yadar, the candidate must spend a night in a sealed sarcophagus in a masoleum haunted by ghouls.
Cult Secrets: New Spell - Teeth of the Cadaver
Autonomous
With the aid of twelve freshly plucked teeth from a dead man's corpse, the man must also have been hung for three days prior. The sorcerer-priest of Yadar calls the spell to being and a black mist rises to caress the teeth and phantom scorpion's rush inwards only to vanish with an acrid smell. Seconds later d12 skeletons claw their way from the very earth and rise to serve the caster for a full day before they return back to the ground. These skeletons are standard Legend skeletons found in Monsters of Legend on Page 84.
Combat Style: Cult of Death (Staff, Dagger, Club)

This is just a tiny thought and remember that I don't have a lot of room for re-writes of that section really. Magic was a special case because that chapter needed to be more about flavour and simple mechanics to make the spellcasting feel more S&S.
 
Expect an order for this when funds allow. You're doing an excellent job from what I've read thus far. Keep up the good work!

By the way, I liked the way you statted the guards, that's pretty much how I do them.

With Combat styles, make as much use of them as you can by including multiple weapons. Similarly with the grimiores, have each cult or whatever have a "standard" skill & spell lists (like the cults in the core rule books).

I wouldn't list all the common skills, only those that vary from the base (and that wouldn't be many - just those important to the NPC). That does two things; saves on word count and allows greater distribution of points to advanced skills.

Matt, if you're reading this, do not let Darren go!
 
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