Rust Monster Ecology

So it's a long-known problem that rust monsters, which eat metal, are difficult to justify in an ecosystem containing, say, locks, iron doors, and so on.

Lore Sjöberg: Speaks With Monsters

Possible partial solution: rust monsters don't actually eat rusted metal; that's an assumption that in-character scholars make which is not entirely accurate. Instead, the rust monster's antennae deliver a catalyst that induces rapid oxidization (i.e., rusting), and the rust monster actually feeds on the energy released by this oxidization reaction. (Mumbo-jumbo about the catalyst is magical and that's why it can rust kinds of metals that normally don't rust.)

So if a door or a lock is already rusted all to heck, it's no good for the rust monster to feed on, unlike, say, combat-ready weapons and armor. (Allowing for metal objects in the dungeon to exist at a very specific level of rusted, not fresh enough for the rust monster to eat but not rusted enough to be inoperable.)

This in turn suggests the possibility of a related, perhaps more powerful species of monster, one that induces oxidization not in iron, but in carbon-based (i.e., flammable) materials. Which is to say, it sets you on fire and eats the resulting heat.

Do Familiars or Psicrystals Get Feats?

Druid/ranger animal companions and paladin special mounts gain hit dice as their master levels, and so gain all the benefits of hit dice, including feats at first and every third level and ability score increases at every fourth level. This did not occur to me until a player asked if this was so, and the answer turned out to be yes, obviously it is so.

The question is fuzzier when it comes to psicrystals and familiars. The consensus on the Rules As Written is that psicrystals do and familiars do not -- but this is naturally absurd, in the same vein as such other strict RAW weirdnesses as drown healing, death not preventing you from taking actions, and tower shields turning themselves (and their wielder) invisible when hidden behind.

Psicrystals and familiars are both treated as having their masters' hit dice and half their masters' hit points, so it should be obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the intention was that they are the same when it comes to hit dice and the benefits thereof. Where the confusion arises is a slight discrepancy in language between the two:

A familiar's hit dice are defined on the sorcerer/wizard entry as "For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master’s character level or the familiar’s normal HD total, whichever is higher."

The corresponding psion entry makes no mention of a psicrystal's hit dice, so a psicrystal's hit dice are instead defined on the psicrystal creature entry as "Its Hit Dice are equal to its master’s Hit Dice (counting only levels in psion or wilder)".

This is taken by the masses to mean that psicrystals have hit dice, and therefore all the benefits that accrue with hit dice, and familiars are merely treated as having hit dice, and therefore gain no benefits of having hit dice. Despite being baldly preposterous, this interpretation is held by so many people that I feel like I've stepped through a portal into an alternate dimension where nothing makes sense and they spell it "Berenstain Bears" instead of "Berenstein Bears". (I jest.)

Are there any (other) creatures in the game that entirely lack hit dice? I can't think of any. Even animated objects gain hit dice when animated. As far as I know, the game features no creatures that don't have hit dice; everything with hit points and no hit dice is an object.

Hit points are obviously not to be treated as an effect of hit dice here, because HP is defined separately as half the master's HP in the same sections that define familiar and psicrystal HD as equal to the master's HD. Similarly, BAB, saves, and skills are treated separately in separate sections, and are thus probably not treated as effects of hit dice. However, it is perfectly plausible to argue that feats and ability score increases are "effects related to number of Hit Dice", and thus accrue to familiars even if you somehow maintain that familiars really don't actually have hit dice.

Moreover, the line under Familiar Basics that qualifies "For each skill in which either the master or the familiar has ranks" clearly indicates that familiars have skill ranks, which they couldn't have if they don't have hit dice. It goes on to say "use either the normal skill ranks for an animal of that type or the master’s skill ranks, whichever are better", which seems to indicate that a familiar doesn't gain skill ranks beyond what they start with, but it clearly still has them, which means a familiar must have at least its starting hit dice.

In any event, the Rules As Written and the Rules as Intended should always be subservient to what makes sense and what makes fun. The RAW, being vague on what an "effect related to number of Hit Dice" is, are not as clear as everybody thinks they are, the RAI are clearly in conflict with the common interpretation, and, though what makes more fun is unclear (casters don't really need nice things; much of the familiar section seems intended to simplify the familiar for ease of play but actually has quite the opposite effect), what makes sense is that the things that are the same should be the same. Either both psicrystals and familiars have feats, or neither does.

This steadfast adherence among the GITP forums (at least, every member of the GITP forums I've talked to about it) to this particular interpretation of RAW, in defiance of other interpretations of RAW and all the considerations that should be more important than any interpretation of RAW, is a prime example of their fetishization of the consensus interpretation of RAW, however nonsensical, above all the considerations that should be more important in actual play. (Which is why I'm posting this here, in this space safe from RAW fetishization, and not there.) Don't get me wrong, the GITP forums are a great place full of great people, but they can get pretty dogmatic about their assumptions sometimes.

Non-Human Animals in D&D 3.5e

This post is aimed primarily at a lay audience, and therefore I'll be defining a lot of terms that many of my readers will already be familiar with and take for granted.

In this post, I will default to the style of capitalizing in-game terms with defined meanings. This is most relevant example is the difference between animals (the normal scientific real-world definition of "members of the animal kingdom") and Animals (the D&D 3.5e definition of "members of the Animal Type").

--- Introduction

In Dungeons and Dragons, one rarely encounters actual living animals, except when a local cat elects to leap up on the table to play with the dice and miniatures. However, the game's treatment of fictional animals reflects our thoughts about real animals, and is thus worth contemplating.

--- Animals and Types

In D&D 3.5, all nouns are either Creatures, Objects, or Conditions. (There's some debate as to which category some things fall into and whether a thing can be both -- for example, it's not entirely clear whether a corpse is an Object or simply a Creature with the Dead condition. While it is clear that Intelligent Items are Creatures, it's not clear whether or not they are also Objects.) Note that the Creature/Object dichotomy is not the same as the Living/Nonliving dichotomy -- there are nonliving Creatures (such as zombies and golems), and there are living Objects (such as trees and bushes). A Creature is defined as anything with a Wisdom and Charisma score. A Condition is something that affects a Creature or Object, such as Paralysis or Disease.

Of the fifteen Types in D&D (Aberration, Animal, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Giant, Humanoid, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Ooze, Outsider, Plant, Undead, and Vermin), all real-world animals, past and present, are distributed between three: Animal, Humanoid, and Vermin.

The only real-world animals with the Humanoid Type are humans and neanderthals (Neanderthals are treated as somewhat of an afterthought in the D&D canon, mentioned only in one of many supplements, so I will mostly treat them as an afterthought as well). Other Humanoids include elves, orcs, dwarves (which are distinct from dwarfs), gnomes, halflings, and so on.

Vermin comprise, more or less, invertebrates. Most Vermin species are fictional, including such varieties as spiders, centipedes, and scorpions ranging from Tiny (the size of cats, just this side of realistic for some examples) to Colossal (the size of a smallish house). Vermin are often Mindless, which means they have no Intelligence score. More on that later.

The Animal type comprises, more or less, all real-world non-human animals, past or present. There are a few fictional species in the Animal type, mostly limited to the Dire Animal category (Dire Animals being creatures that are larger and stronger than their regular counterparts, but which still have the traits and features of Animals). From cats, dogs, and horses to apes, sharks, elephants, squids, and so on, the Animal type is what I will mostly be concentrating on today.

There are some animals that might not be considered Creatures at all. Tapeworms, for example, are not (to the best of my knowledge) given statistics or game effects anywhere in published materials, but if they were, I would lay at least even odds that it would be treated as a Disease (i.e., a Condition) and not a Creature.

The most salient trait of the Animal type is "Intelligence score of 1 or 2 (no Creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an Animal)." (I could also run with "Alignment: Always Neutral", but that would make for a much more ethics-heavy post.)

--- Animals and Intelligence

In D&D 3.5, every creature has six Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The most morally salient of these scores is Intelligence (and, to a lesser extent, Wisdom), so this is what I will be concentrating on.

"Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons." It also determines how many languages you know (a Creature with an Intelligence of 2 or lower knows no languages; most Creatures with an Intelligence of 12 or higher knows more than one language.)

"Wisdom describes a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one’s ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one’s surroundings. [...] If you want your character to have acute senses, put a high score in Wisdom. Every creature has a Wisdom score."

Humans have ability scores ranging in a bell curve from 3 (abysmal) to 18 (just this side of superhuman), with the mode, median, and and mean being 10. The most common method for generating ability scores for normal humans is to roll 3d6 -- which is to say, roll three 6-sided dice and add the results together. This approximates the given range and average. (Exceptional humans -- such as most player characters -- use other methods. Non-humans use the above method and then add Racial Modifiers to some Abilities and subract Racial Modifiers from others. For example, an elf adds 2 to their Dexterity but subtracts 2 from their Constitution, so an elf would have 5-20 Dexterity but 1-16 Constitution.) (Intelligence, being a range with a bell curve, can be mapped to IQ, but doing so is beyond the scope of this post.)

A Creature can have a Nonability in some score, which is usually indicated by "--" or "Ø". A Creature that cannot move, for example, has a nonability in Dexterity and Strength. A Creature that is not alive (such as a zombie) has no Constitution. A Creature that cannot think and is as an automaton has an Intelligence nonability. (Note that this is distinct from having 0 in an Ability. A Creature never naturally has 0 in an Ability, but it can have its Abilities reduced to 0 through Ability Damage or Ability Drain -- in which case it is paralyzed, unconscious, or dead, depending on the Ability affected.)

Which brings me back to "Intelligence score of 1 or 2 (no Creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an Animal)." If an Animal should gain Intelligence of 3 or higher by any means (usually magic), it ceases to be an Animal (the rules are unclear on what it becomes, but many players hold the interpretation that it becomes a Magical Beast). Similarly, Vermin are usually Mindless (they techniacally can have Intelligence scores, and can even have Intelligence in excess of 2, but all published Vermin have a nonability in Intelligence), meaning they are no better than automatons.

This means two things with which I intend to take issue: First, that the most intelligent Animal is considered less intelligent than the least intelligent human; second, that the wide range of animal intellects is confined to the range of --, 1, and 2, whereas the (perhaps relatively narrow) range of human intellects is given the broader numerical range of 3-18.

Dogs, octopuses, corvids, parrots, monkeys and apes, elephants, dolphins, and rats are all widely considered very intelligent, capable of tool use, complex communication, and problem solving -- quite probably more intelligent than many very young or severely handicapped humans. And yet these creatures are all considered to have the absurdly low Intelligence score of 2.

Bees are hardly automatons, being capable of complex "dance" to communicate the precise location of desirable food sources. Other eusocial insects, such as ants, termites, and some wasps, are similarly gifted in organization. Some spiders are capable of weaving complex webs in unlikely places, or of lying in ambush. A defense of the "Vermin are Mindless" school of thought might be to observe that these behaviors are instinctual, preprogrammed into these animals by evolution, and not learned -- which is probably fair, and I don't know that I have a strong position on the subject one way or the other.

The numerical range of --, 1, and 2 is much narrower than the numerical range of 3-18. The game's focus is, naturally, on playable characters, so it makes sense that the range of human experience would be given finer degrees of distinction than the range of animal experience, but I would argue that the difference between the least intelligent human and the most intelligent human is less great than the difference in intellect between, say, a leech and an elephant.

The Wisdom of published animals, on the other hand, ranges from 8 to 17 (with an average of just over 13), so the general consensus at Wizards of the Coast appears to be that the average Animal is wiser than the average Human (though the wisest human is slightly wiser than the wisest Animal). This undoubtedly has something to do with Wisdom's connection to the senses -- many animals certainly have a variety of keener senses than humans do. It likely also reflects the perception that animals are more "in tune" with nature than most humans are (Wisdom is the primary ability score for Druids and Rangers, the two classes designed around being in tune with nature).

--- Animals as Trade Goods and Carrying Capacity

Animals also appear in the section Wealth and Money, under Trade Goods. In the same chart as "one pound of wheat", "one square yard of linen" and "one pound of platinum" are entries such as "one chicken", "one pig", and "one ox". This serves to emphasize the use of animals as objects, rather than subjects.

Similarly, it is possible to buy a mule to carry your loot. With a carrying capacity of up to 690 pounds and a cost of only 8 gold pieces (less than a pound of saffron or a flask of acid), mules are among the best methods to carry stuff around (until you start picking up extradimensional storage space like Bags of Holding and Portable Holes). This reflects their use for this purpose in the real world, but barely acknowledges their status as living beings, much less their status as beings of moral concern.

--- Animal Companions, Special Mounts, and Familiars

Some Classes gain a companion animal as a class feature. Druids and Rangers gain Animal Companions, Paladins gain Special Mounts, and Sorcerers and Wizards gain Familiars. These all begin as regular Animals but gain features as the character with which they are associated levels up.

Animal Companions are drawn from a list of Animals including wolves, owls, badgers, snakes, and so on, and never gain intelligence, though they gain strength in other ways.

Special Mounts begin as warhorses or warponies, but they are treated as Magical Beasts instead of Animals.

Familiars begin as animals such as bats, cats, owls, ravens, and weasels, but they become Magical Beasts when they become Familiars, and they gain, in addition to other abilities, Intelligence. This means that, at very high level, the Wizard's or Sorcerer's Familiar might wind up being among the most intelligent creatures in the party. And yet, despite being the most intelligent creature in the party, the Familiar still tends to be sidelined in favor of the main player characters.

--- Handle Animal and Wild Empathy

There are two main ways of interacting with Animals.

Most characters use the Handle Animal skill, which deals primarily with training animals to do Tricks (such as "Attack", "Heel", or "Track") and "pushing" them to do Tricks they don't know.

Druids and Rangers, on the other hand, can use their Wild Empathy class feature, which allows them to improve the disposition of Animals towards them, for example to make a Hostile Animal Friendly. This functions in the same way as the Diplomacy skill works on creatures with an Intelligence of 3 or higher.

Leveling Up Without A Rest

So most tables I've played at use the house/variant rule that you can't level up in the middle of a dungeon; you only level up if you get a proper 8-hour rest. This is so common at tables I've played with that I don't think people realize it isn't the standard rule. And it just sort of makes intuitive sense, at least to me (perhaps because it's how I first learned to play).

But I've come to the position that there's not really any reason to use this rule after all.

Realism? Is it really so much more realistic to be suddenly better at whatever it is you're doing after an 8-hour rest than in the middle of doing it?

It's a holdover from the way some video games work? One can probably name as many video games where you level up immediately when you have enough XP (e.g. Angband) as games where you need to return to town to do so (e.g. Mordor/Demise). (And some, like City of Heroes, where you immediately get some benefits of leveling up but have to visit a trainer to get the rest of them.)

Confusion over whether you have your new hit points and prepared spells? That's easy enough to answer: yes, you immediately gain your new hit points. Your new spell slots can be filled if you take the requisite 15-minute downtime for filling empty slots if you're a prepared caster wizard; you immediately get your new spells per day if you're a spontaneous caster. (Your existing depleted HP and used spells aren't restored.)

Don't want to spend half the gaming session leveling up characters? Especially in the middle of a fight? That's fine, just hold off on delivering XP until the end of the session, and certainly never deliver XP in the middle of a fight. (I've still got some players who, in their own words, "can't be assed" to level up in the week between sessions, and spend the first few minutes of some sessions leveling up, but that's fine, I like to give plenty of time at the beginning of a session for players to settle down and settle in anyway.)

Further discussion can be found here.

Mechanatrixes and Electricity

So, there's the mechanatrix race from Fiend Folio. They're kind of neat, because they're descended from robots constructs.

And also they're described as follows: "They behave with cold rationality and have a no-nonsense attitude toward life." Which is to say, they're wombats.

But the most noteworthy thing about them, from a mechanical perspective, is how electricity damage heals them. Every time a mechanatrix would take electricity damage, they take no damage, and it heals them instead, 1 point of healing for every 3 points of damage they would have taken.

So how do you get at-will electricity damage? Should be easier than at-will healing, right? Right! But, as it turns out, not much easier.

---

The obvious notion is to consult reserve feats, those feats from Complete Mage and Complete Champion that give you supernatural abilities as long as you have a spell of a certain level prepared. And, indeed, there is an electricity damage reserve feat: Storm Bolt (CM).

But wait! Storm Bolt gives you a 20-foot line of electricity. Can you include yourself in a line effect? Let's consult the SRD: "A line-shaped spell shoots away from you in a line in the direction you designate. It starts from any corner of your square and extends to the limit of its range or until it strikes a barrier that blocks line of effect."

So, by RAW, no, not really. It starts in any corner of your square, and shoots away from you. Our mechanatrix could get a mage buddy with Storm Bolt, but he couldn't Storm Bolt himself.

The same problem applies to if you're, say, a Dragonfire Adept or Dragon Shaman with lightning breath (plus you're generally explicitly immune to your own breath weapon).

---

Or, the allegation goes, you could use a persisted or or permanency'd thunderhead (SpC) spell. A little cloud that floats above your head all day, zapping you with tiny lightning bolts for one electricity damage every round, forever.

Except the mechanatrix isn't healed for 1 point every time they accumulate 3 points of electricity damage they would have taken. Every time they take electricity damage, it's divided by 3, they're healed for that much, and the remainder doesn't matter. 1/3 rounds down to 0 -- it's healing, not damage, so the "all attacks deal at least 1 damage" exception to the "always round down" rule doesn't apply. Thunderhead does nothing.

You could persist or permanency a weapon of energy spell, but then wind up with a bunch of your build or a butt-ton of gold invested in metamagic reducers or a single spell, which is hardly worth it for something so trivial as infinite out-of-combat heals.

---

You could shell out 8,301gp for a +1 Shock Whip. As long as you're wearing a bit of armor, you can whip yourself all day and only the electricity damage will go through. Expensive, weird, and a little kinky. ...I shall expend no more words on this notion.

---

You could take a level of electrokineticist. Kind of a lackluster class. It requires a powerpoint reserve but doesn't advance manifesting, so it's a trap for actual manifesters, and you should just use Wild Talent to qualify. But the class features aren't even great for a non-manifester.

Plus, most of the x-kineticist's class abilities specify things like "she takes no damage from a x lash she creates" or xs "engulf one of the pyrokineticist’s hands (but do her no harm)", so you'd have to work out whether an electrokineticist mechanatrix can deliberately target themselves for the full effect of their powers.

An entire class level, just for this ability? There's gotta be something better.

---

Well, there's something that, by RAW, does work way better: consult Magic of Incarnum, and take the Shape Soulmeld (lightning gauntlets) feat. Can't wear magic gloves, but 1d6 elec damage at will as a touch attack (and it is well known that it is possible to touch oneself).

But... incarnum is (subjectively) kind of lame. It's one of those things, along with Tome of Magic* and Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords, that feels to me too slick and soulless and 4th-edition-y, and which only annoying optimizers ever tend to actually open. There's gotta be something more aesthetically pleasing. More... interesting.

*Binders can allegedly bind Focalor to achieve some form of at-will electricity damage, but honestly just typing this sentence has used up 100% of my ability to give a crap about ToM for the day, and I couldn't possibly find it in my heart to double-check whether this would actually even work.

---

So here's a more interesting idea: shocker lizard.

You could maybe get a domesticated one for money, but you could much more reliably get one by being a 5th level arcane spellcaster and taking Improved Familiar. (You may also consider trading away your regular familiar for an alternate class feature or the Forlorn flaw (Dragon #333), because the Obtain Familiar (CA) feat is better: it makes prestige classes progress your familiar.) Or you could be a ranger or druid and take Monstrous Animal Companion (Dragon #326).

Anyway, shocker lizard. Your eye might be drawn to its Stunning Shock ability, but alas! It won't work. "An electrical shock" sounds promising, but "this attack deals 2d8 points of nonlethal damage". There's no such thing as nonlethal electricity damage. Nonlethal is its own thing. A point of damage cannot be both nonlethal and electricity, it is either one or the other. The shocker lizard is quite clear: it's fluffed as electricity, but it's actually just nonlethal. (A particularly generous DM might rule that the shocker's nonlethal shock will cure any nonlethal damage the mechanatrix may have taken, but we oughtn't rely on the generosity of the DM.)

No, what we need is Lethal Shock, because that's actually electricity damage. But wait! You need two shocker lizards for that!

Are you seeing what I'm getting at yet?

What I'm getting at is this: Mechanatrixes have tamed shocker lizards, and use them in war and daily life. Mechanatrix society is ruled by a cadre of arcane casters, all with shocker lizard familiars. Mechanatrix adventuring and war parties always include at least two shocker lizards, usually more, with at least one usually being the familiar or animal companion of one of the party's casters.

Next time you use mechanatrixes as a DM, team them up with some shocker lizards. The lizards have been trained to use their lethal shock every round, and the mechanatrixes and lizards all stay within 20ft of one another. (Maybe bump the total ECR of the encounter up by one or so, because synergy.)

As for me, because I'm not currently DMing a game: next time I'm making new characters (at ECL6 or more) at the same time as somebody else (either because it's a new campaign, or because two characters died at the same time), I'm going to try to convince them to make a pair of wandering mechanatrix adventurers with shocker lizard familiars/companions. ("Hey, you feel like making a bard, beguiler, dread necromancer, druid, duskblade, hexblade, ranger, sorcerer, spellthief, wizard, warmage, or wu jen?")

EDIT: Alternately, you could just take Extra Familiar (Dragon #280), which negates the requirement that you have a buddy with the same plan, but which makes it a bit less interesting. On the other hand, every extra shocker lizard adds another 2d8 electricity damage each round (that's extra damage to anything not immune to electricity and an extra ≈3 points of healing for each mechanatrix), so you would certainly benefit from everybody involved having Extra Familiar (at most 6 lizards can contribute to any one lethal shock, but even if you have 7 lizards, you can just have one 5-lizard shock and one 2-lizard shock each round, paying only a slight save DC cost, because the save DC is also a function of the number of lizards involved. Or there's the option to just have more than 6 lizards contribute to a single shock: it would still only be 12d8 damage, but there's no cap on the save DC).

Extra Spell

Extra Spell. The feat that launched a thousand arguments, once upon a time. To wit: does it allow access to spells that aren't on your class list? Or does it allow access only to spells that you would normally be able to access anyway?

The arguments were (mostly) settled when the official WotC FAQ chimed in:

Can the warmage (Complete Arcane) benefit from the Extra Spell feat?

No. Extra Spell lets you add one spell to your list of spells known, but the spell must be taken from your class spell list. Since the warmage already knows all the spells on his class spell list, this feat has no effect.

But not everybody treats the FAQ as gospel, and rightly so (often, they provide insane and self-contradictory interpretations of the rules).

Prima facie, the line in the feat about "Extra Spell is generally used to learn a specific spell that the character lacks access to and would be unable to research" seems reasonably clear-cut: it allows you to mine other class lists, because if a spell is on another class's list and not yours, you lack access to it. If so, then the FAQ is flatly contradicting the text of the feat, so the FAQ is wrong.

However, I can see how it could have been intended to mean "lacks physical access to a written version to copy into his spellbook". It's ambiguous, but I can see the possibility.

---

That said, though casters don't need nice things, I disagree with the "official" FAQ answer.

There are precedents in the Expanded Knowledge, Shape Soulmeld, and Martial Study/Stance feats, which allow you to access things you would otherwise be unable to access.

There are hardly any circumstances under which Extra Spell would be useful if you adhere to the FAQ's answer. If you're on a class with a desperately limited number of spells known, maybe. Or, as the text of the feat says, if you want a spell but can't find a scroll of it. Or if you're a Chameleon and use your free floating feat every day to temporarily learn a new spell long enough to copy it into your spellbook. So the official interpretation makes it a waste of a precious feat.

Worst of all, the official interpretation is boring.

---

So I'm inclined, in my games, to let Extra Spell take a spell off any list at all.

With the exception of known game-breaker spells (though most of those are level 9, and thus unlearnable with Extra Spell).

And with the caveat that you don't get to pick from the weird lists like Trapsmith or Adept to get a spell early; if it's available to a full caster player base class, you get it as a spell of that level, no lower.

Identifying Potions

Alright, so there's actually more ways to identify a potion than there are to identify other things. A simple DC25 spellcraft check will let you identify a potion, no problem.

But something that I think the DMG may even mention (or possibly DMG2, it seems like the kind of thing that would be in DMG2): it lends verisimilitude and consistency to the world if you always describe the same sort of potion the same way.

So, in the same sheet as my list of items, I've begun to create a master list of potions. Every time anybody finds a potion that isn't already on the list, I'll add it to the list, and henceforth describe all of the same kind of potion the same way. From now on, potions of cure light wounds will always be "shimmering puce".

This gives an additional way to quickly identify potions: if you've seen a potion of glibness before and it was a transparent white potion, and you encounter another transparent white potion, it's a safe bet that's another potion of glibness. There are only 900 possible combinations, so the slightly hilarious situation might arise where two potions appear identical (like what happened when Sky the drow cleric labeled several flasks of acid "healing potion"), but that's likely to be pretty rare.

To this end, I created a master random potion chart (cribbing in part from the possible potion descriptions available in Angband), which one can consult whenever a new potion needs to be described. You'll need to roll two d30s (or one d30 twice):

Dice	Color	Quality
1	azure	bright
2	black	bubbling
3	blue	clotted
4	brown	cloudy
5	chartreuse	coagulated
6	clear	dark
7	copper	effervescing
8	crimson	fizzing
9	cyan	gloopy
10	gold	glowing
11	gray	hazy
12	green	icky
13	indigo	intense
14	infrared	marbled
15	magenta	metallic
16	maroon	milky
17	navy blue	misty
18	orange	oily
19	pink	pale
20	puce	pastel
21	puke green	pearlescent
22	puke yellow	pungent
23	red	sedimentated
24	silver	shimmering
25	tangerine	sickly
26	teal	smoking
27	ultraviolet	speckled
28	violet	translucent
29	white	transparent
30	yellow	viscous

(Any potion described as "coagulated", "clotted", or "sedimentated" should be shaken well before use. Any potion described as "bubbling", "fizzing", or "effervescing" should never be shaken, lest it explode.)

If you want to really push the number of possible combinations up there, you can first roll 1d4: 1 = roll color once, quality once; 2 = roll color twice, quality once; 3 = roll color once, quality twice; 4 = roll color twice, quality twice. This allows for things like a cloudy, marbled, silver-and-maroon potion. Perhaps if there are two colors, that might mean they're separated like salad dressing and you should shake well before using. Or if there are two colors and it's bubbling, maybe the bubbles are the second color. There's a lot of room for improvisation.

Unidentified Items

So D&D gives an elaborate set of procedures for identifying items -- detect magic plus a Spellcraft check, examine it for helpful clues, an epic Appraise check plus a Spellcraft check, an epic spellcraft check, casting Identify, or (inevitably the most common course of action) bringing it to the Mage's Guild to ask divination specialist apprentice wizard Beth to cast identify for 110gp. (But even these methods are unlikely to identify any cursey properties of an item, which generally come out in the normal course of play.)

But it doesn't give a lot of advice for dealing with unidentified items. I hit upon a technique that has worked pretty well for me. It involves a separate sheet in my Excel Document of Doom.

Basically, whenever players acquire a magic or otherwise special item (or occasionally a completely mundane item, just to throw off metagamers), I describe it, and then I give it a number, and I tell the players that, whenever they use the item or mention it to me, also mention the number, so I know which one it is.

The Excel sheet has four columns: the number; a description and all the properties of the item; a list of all the properties the characters have identified so far; and whoever currently possesses the item.

"I hit him with the big sword I found in that pile of dung. Item #6."
"Do you now? Excellent. As you fly into an uncontrollable rage, you discover that it wasn't just a +2 greatsword after all."

It works pretty well.

Items aren't removed from the list unless they're lost or broken or sold to an NPC. (Given to an NPC means it goes into the NPC's treasure. Sold means it goes into the master list of things that might eventually get rotated back into the world.)

Potential Alternative To Savage Progression?

So, I kind of like my solution to the problem of how annoying negative levels are to to be inflicted with:

But I also kind of like an idea that I came across where, instead of using savage progressions (or for characters where a savage progression is inappropriate), you can start out as a monster with all the relevant abilities and powers, but you have enough negative level adjustments (similar to, but not actually, negative levels) to bring you down to effective level 1. Every time you level up, instead of leveling, you lose a negative level adjustment, until you don't have any more negative level adjustments.

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First, let's analyze the idea of using negative level adjustments, or even just negative levels, instead of savage progressions to see to what extent it has merit.

A normal negative level gives:

• -1 on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws
• -5 hit points
• -1 effective level
• -1 highest level available spell slot

The suggested negative LA drops the -5 hp, the lost spell slots, and the reduced effective level, but adds the following:

• -1 DC for all abilities which call for a saving throw
• -1 to any constant Armor Class bonus granted by race
• Level adjustment is reduced by 1

I kind of want to test each. And I kind of want to see if it could work at all for creatures that do have racial hit dice, which would normally be the domain of savage progressions. (You see, I'd be okay with doing away with savage progressions altogether, if there's a simpler replacement system available. (I actually very much doubt that this will work out so nicely, but let's give it a try.)) So we'll test traditional negative levels and fancy negative levels on, oh, let's say a drow and a drider.

A drow with 2 traditional levels, enough to bring it down to ECL1, gets:

• +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, +2 Charisma
• Land speed 30 feet.
• Darkvision 120 feet.
• Spell resistance 11.
• +2 racial bonus on Will saves against spells and spell-like abilities.
• Dancing Lights, Darkness, Faerie Fire 1/day, CL1.
• Weapon Proficiency: hand crossbow, rapier, short sword.
• Light blindness
• Miscellaneous elf traits
• -2 to all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws
• -10 hp
• -1 highest level available spell slot
• ECL 1

That's, um... A barbarian (or knight or warblade) will have 2+con HP. A fighter needs to have at least 16 constitution before racial modifier to have more than 1 HP. Any class with a d8, d6, or d4 hit die will always have 1 HP. Super-fragile.

Aside from that, not too awful, could be balanced.

The variant negative LA leaves the character with their full normal hp, but otherwise the same. Again, could be balanced.

Let's see a drider with 9 traditional negative levels:

• Large (Space/Reach 10'/5')
• 6 Aberration hit dice, but loses 45 HP, leaving him probably close to 1 HP
• +4 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +6 Constitution, +4 Intelligence, +6 Wisdom, +6 Charisma
• Land speed 30 feet, climb speed 15 feet
• Darkvision 60
• +6 natural armor
• Poison DC 10 + con
• Spell Resistance 17
• Casts as a 6th-level cleric, wizard, or sorcerer, but loses 9 spell slots.
• 1/day: dancing lights (DC 10+cha), clairaudience/clairvoyance, darkness, detect good, detect law, detect magic, dispel magic, faerie fire, levitate, suggestion (DC 13+cha)
• +4 Hide and Move Silently. +8 Climb, can always take 10 on Climb checks.
• -9 on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws
• -9 effective levels

As a sorcerer, he could cast 6 cantrips and 5 1st-level spells/day, but he only knows 5 cantrips. As a cleric, he can cast 5 orisons and 2 1st-level spells/day. As a wizard, he can cast 3 cantrips/day.

Contrariwise, the negative LA system would let him keep all his spells and spell slots (and all his HP), but the DC of any spell that has a save (and the two such SLAs) is reduced by 9, and he loses his natural armor. He regains the 1/2 his racial HD to his poison's save DC, but then loses 9, for a total DC of 4 + con.

---

In conclusion, this system was, for very good reason, not intended for use with creatures that have racial hit dice and high LAs, and cannot reasonably be adapted to their use.

But even when applied properly, to creatures with 1 class level and a level adjustment, both versions of the system are only so-so. I don't anticipate incorporating either into my game.

Continua of Power

The Dungeon Master's Guide/Monster Manual mentions basically two options for determining who in your campaign world is powerful and who is not: the obvious character level, and the Elite vs Nonelite system. In the latter, elites use the Elite Array (15, 13, 12, 10, 8; equivalent to 25 point buy); nonelites use the Nonelite Array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8; equivalent to 15 point buy) or the Standard Array (10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10; equivalent to 12 point buy). There may also be a thing about Elites maximizing their hp at first level while Nonelites do not.

I use both of these things, sort of. But I also use other things to determine who's weak and who's powerful.

• Class Level: Almost every person in the world is class level 1 at most. Only the most impressive get past level 3-5. I can count the number of mortal NPCs in the world who have 7 class levels without taking off my shoes. So adventurers who adventure for awhile are awfully powerful by mortal standards. Especially because I apply the CR system as it's written, which means characters, by fighting monsters which are weaker than they are, can get more XP from me faster than they get from most DMs; I think I might stop being quite so generous with XP. (Even though there are no NPCs above class level 7, items which require higher levels to create are plentiful. Don't ask how that happens.)
• Point Buy: PCs and the most naturally talented NPCs start with point buy 30. Most NPCs start with the Standard or Nonelite Array, or with point buy somewhere in the 12-25 range.
• Class Tier: The overwhelming majority of NPCs are Commoners. Of those that aren't, most are other NPC classes like Expert or Warrior. Of those that aren't, most are other low-tier classes like Samurai and Fighter. Some are mid-tier classes like Bard or Factotum, and a handful of the most skilled are high-tier classes like Cleric or Wizard. This, more than class level or point buy, is why churches and cults and mage guilds and the druids who rule the Elves wield so much power.
• Divine Rank: The gods have divine ranks. Because I prefer smaller numbers, I'm inclined to limit my custom pantheon in the same way I limit class level: every god is divine rank 1-5. I've also been considering a system where gods (and only gods) get to gestalt, probably with racial HD or between a high-tier class and a low-tier class, or between two mid-tier classes. (These two things make gods much more powerful than even the most powerful of level 20 PCs, but still in theory defeatable by the most powerful mortals.)

I think I'm going to limit all characters to at most class level 20 (10+ already being epic in this campaign). E20 is kind of a silly concept; nobody's ever going to get that high in the first place in this campaign. But if they do, then they can start advancing as deities. If it ever becomes a thing, I'll come up with rules for doing that. Maybe once you ding 20, you gain divine rank 0; that way, everybody gets a capstone even if their class doesn't give them one. Perhaps at level 20 you stop gaining experience altogether, though you're free to keep gaining gold, and advancing divine ranks depends only on RP. Maybe there'll be a way to gain divine rank 0 through RP before hitting 20 if any players are inclined to seek it out (perhaps by killing an existing god). Maybe you get to gestalt if you hit divine rank 1. These are all interesting ideas.

And We Wonder Why People Think D&D Is Satanic

The joke that always goes around this time of year is that Jesus is a zombie and will eat your brains. But if you actually read the Gospels, you'll notice that Jesus does many things a zombie cannot do. He continues to speak, cast spells, fly, lead followers, and do all sorts of crazy things. Jesus is clearly not a zombie. Jesus is clearly a lich.

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To qualify for lich, Jesus needs to have been caster level 11, which is pretty ludicrously high, so we'll assume he's level 11 and no higher.

Of course, to cast Raise Dead (as he does in Matthew 9, Luke 7, and, most famously, John 11) he'd have to be at least a level 9 cleric (or archivist or favored soul) anyway, so at least that fits.

He should have only been able to use Create Food and Water to feed 33 people per casting, then. Maybe he managed to get it up to 5,000 (as he does in all four Gospels, and then to 4,000 again in Mark 8 and Matthew 15) with some sort of crazy metamagic shenanigans, or maybe he homebrewed a higher-level version of the spell.

At first, I thought the spell Jesus casts in Matthew 21:19 is clearly Blight, a druid/sor/wiz spell which Jesus, as a cleric, wouldn't be able to cast -- unless he has the Decay domain (or is an archivist, or took some obscure feat just to get this spell, neither of which seems very likely). Except, while the tree "withers", the wording of the passage leaves open the possibility that it isn't actually dead, and will simply "never bear fruit again". Which is to say, he might have cast Bestow Curse -- except that Bestow Curse targets a creature. Trees are living objects, not creatures. So unless it was secretly a fig treant, this was probably Blight, and YHWH offers the Decay domain -- which is, of course, completely in keeping with YHWH's personality, albeit not quite so much with Jesus's.

Jesus heals oodles of blind people, deaf people, mute people, lepers, dropsy, withered hands, paralysis, and so on. It seems to be his very favourite thing to do. Luckily, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Disease, Neutralize Poison, Restoration, Remove Paralysis, and so on, are all perfectly within his capacity to cast as a cleric 11. Not to mention the entire Cure line, which he can cast up through Mass Cure Moderate Wounds. He can even do so spontaneously, if you think he's Good or the nicer side of Neutral; but even if he isn't, he can still prepare them just fine.

And he drives out a number of demons. Dismissal serves this purpose just fine, though he does have the capacity to cast the higher level Banishment for the tougher demonic infestations.

One of Jesus's most famous spells, of course, is Water Walk. No problem there.

He calms a storm in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Uh-oh: Control Weather is a level 7 spell! Jesus would have to be level 13 to cast it, which is just not within the realm of reason. So he must have done it with the lower-level Control Winds! As a storm god, it's perfectly reasonable for YHWH to offer the Air domain, so obviously that's how he did it. (The Air domain also gives Air Walk, explaining any situations in which Jesus flies. Not that he needs the domain to cast the spell, it's also a basic cleric 4 spell. But what's he going to prepare in that domain slot instead, Enervation?)

So that's that: Jesus is probably a level 11 cleric with the Air and Decay domains (and, of course, the lich template).

---

Notice that Jesus was, of course, not high enough to actually cast Miracle. None of his so-called "miracles" were actually Miracles, nor, as I have shown, did they need to have been. Jesus could cast every spell he is shown to have cast without resorting to Miracle. Indeed, just preparing Miracle every day and using it for every purpose would have been less impressive than showing the foresight involved in preparing the right spells on the days he'd need them. (Not to mention, the things Jesus did were pretty weaksauce and unimpressive if we postulate access to 9th-level spells. This is the spell level at which casters can start creating their own mini-universes. Withering fig trees and multiplying bread and fishes is a little impressive for a level 11 cleric, a trifling waste of time for a level 17 cleric. But this is getting a little bit into the "handicap argument".)

Obviously Jesus has the Leadership feat. Or else he's a Thrallherd, which would be more plausible except a psion can't do most of what Jesus did. So leadership it is. Probably chained leadership, even, his cohort had leadership, too, as did the cohort's cohort, etc. That's relatively unproblematic.

Ah, but when he actually became a lich, all the dead came out of their graves and started wandering around. Animate Dead is single-target. I thought for a moment Summon Undead was a possibility, but the whole line is limited to at most four at once. I seem to recall a spell in some obscure book that animates every body within a radius and can be extended or persisted, but that'd be an awfully high-level spell. So I guess I dunno about this one.

The obvious, burning question: what is Jesus's phylactery? And the equally obvious, burning answer: the Holy Grail.

Obviously, Jesus turned the Grail into his phylactery either at the Last Supper or while he was on the cross, depending on which version of the myth you go with (i.e., whether the Holy Grail is the same artifact as the Holy Chalice).

Which explains how Jesus "escaped" from the cave in which he was interred: his original body just disintegrated, and a new body formed next to his phylactery. It's so obvious!

This also throws Arthurian legend into a new light: rather than seeking the Holy Grail for glory or because their deity told them to, Arthur and his knights sought it to destroy it, so that the world could finally be rid of the menace of the lich-god Jesus.

I leave as an exercise for the reader the consideration of whether the Knights of the Round Table succeeded or failed.

Dragonwrought Kobolds are not True Dragons

"All true dragons gain more abilities and greater power as they age. (Other creatures that have the dragon type do not.) They range in length from several feet upon hatching to more than 100 feet after attaining the status of great wyrm" (MMI pg. 68). Dragonwrought kobolds gain +1 to mental ability scores three times as they age - that might qualify as "greater power" (if only barely), but it definitely doesn't count as "more abilities". And kobolds range in length from several inches upon hatching to 4 feet (the maximum of Small, which kobolds never surpass). They definitely don't qualify as True Dragons.

Multiheaded Characters

I've always kind of liked the idea of playing half an ettin. Get another player to play the other half, and be two characters sharing a two-headed body.

There are, however, two problems with this: the first is that the ettin is an ECL15 creature. The second is that there are no real rules for two characters sharing one body. Let's fix both of these problems.

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The first is relatively easy to fix. Savage Species provides a Multiheaded template, which we can apply to some suitably monstrous creature. Applying it to mongrelfolk is too obvious. Well, hurm. What low-ECL (let's say less than 3HD and less than LA3) PC-suitable races have an intelligence and charisma penalty and a strength and constitution bonus? Let's check MonsterForge.

Abyssal maw demons, githzerai, gnolls snow goblins, neanderthals, orcs, whitespawn hordeling spawns of tiamat, and windrazor windblades. I don't happen to know what two of those are offhand, and I don't care quite enough to look them up, so let's rule out the demons and the windblades. I was about to rule out the spawn of Tiamat, but wait, what's Tiamat's defining feature? All those heads! So let's keep that in the running for now.

No, I'm not really absolutely sure what I'm looking for. I kind of want to replicate the feel of the ettin without necessarily actually replicating the ettin.

Multiheaded orc is a little too obvious, and I'm not fond of D&D neanderthals in general (If their name were anything else, it would be better, but they took generic cavemen and slapped a label which does not describe cavemen. Plus, D&D already has cavemen in spades, do we really need something that's the same as all the other cavemen except less green?), so let's rule those out. And I'd rather there be a reason. And if there's to be a fair amount of extra ECL, I'd prefer there to be a good fluff reason for it, so that rules out the gnoll.

Leaving us with snow goblins and whitespawn hordelings! Let's look up the details on these creatures. I don't happen to remember the fluff for the spawn of Tiamat, other than "Bahamut starts making dragonborns, so Tiamat retaliates by bangin' everything in sight". Or maybe it's the other way 'round. Let's crack Monster Manual IV and read!

Yeah, it's the other way 'round, the dragonborn are Bahamut's response to the spawn of Tiamat. And the spawn are not necessarily literally Tiamat's progeny, other than she caused them to come about.

I don't mind the fluff for the spawn of Tiamat, and will probably eventually use some of them in my game, but I don't think "the very weakest of Tiamat's spawn get the glory of imitating her in having multiple heads". I definitely will remember, however, that the multiheaded template is of particular merit, fluff-wise, for chromatic dragons and dragon-descended.

Okay, so, multiheaded snow goblins it is. To Frostburn!

Eh, let's ditch the throat sacs. If I wanted Kuo-Toa, I'd use Kuo-Toa. In fact, let's ditch all of the fluff and use only the crunch, we can refluff them as much as we want. In fact, let's forget the crunch and just use regular goblins, which are basically the same but have the benefit of being OGL.

So, taking the SRD's goblin and applying an extra head to it:

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Two-Headed Goblin
Small Humanoid (goblinoid)
2 humanoid hit dice
-2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma.
Small size: +1 bonus to Armor Class, +1 bonus on attack rolls, +4 bonus on Hide checks, -4 penalty on grapple checks, lifting and carrying limits ¾ those of Medium characters.
A two-headed goblin’s base land speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision out to 90 feet
+4 racial bonus on Move Silently and Ride checks.
+2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks.
+1 natural armor bonus
Superior Two-Weapon Fighting: Because each head controls one arm, the two-headed goblin has no penalty on attack rolls for attacking with multiple weapons, and the number of attacks and the damage bonus for each weapon are calculated as though the weapon were held in a primary hand.
Automatic Languages: Common, Goblin. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elven, Giant, Gnoll, Orc.
Bonus feats: Improved initiative, Combat Reflexes
Favored Class: Rogue.
Level Adjustment: +2

---

Those extra HD aren't necessary, and we could bump that LA down by removing some of the unneccessary extra abilities. Let's say this isn't just a goblin with two heads, it's a new creature, so it can lose most of the goblin traits. So let's drop the racial hit dice and the natural armor bonus, drop the Move Silently and Ride checks, reduce the Darkvision to Low-Light Vision. We're going to wind up counting it as two characters, so the bonuses to Listen, Search, and Spot checks (from having twice the usual number of eyes and ears) will be made redundant with simply rolling the things twice, so drop those, too. Getting to act twice in initiative is better than Improved Initiative, and getting to make two attacks of opportunity is nearly as good as Combat Reflexes, so those can go. The Superior Two-Weapon Fighting is important and can stay, though. And let's even the racial bonuses out a bit, no more str penalty or dex bonus.

That, according to this, brings us down approximately to 0.5 ECL at 1HD. I guess we can give it something back. Let's make it Medium and give it a strength bonus. I think at this point we've taken a two-headed goblin and turned it into a two-headed orc. Let's give it, oh, I don't know. Vulnerability to sonic, what with having twice as many ears (yes I know that's not how sonic damage works), and let's say Fast Healing 1, I was just thinking the other day that fast healing is neat. Although, it gets twice as many turns, so that would wind up being Fast Healing 2, which is too much. Let's give it DR or energy resistance or something instead. Resistance 5 to electricity, that's what we'll do, what with having twice as many hearts. Shut up, that's perfectly cromulent. And let's round it out with, I don't know, Scent.

Oh yeah, it's no longer a two-headed goblin in any sense at all, so it needs a new name. Let's call it zweikopf, which is probably not good German, but whatever.

Okay, so:

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Zweikopf
Medium Humanoid
+2 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma.
A zweikopf’s base land speed is 30 feet.
Low-Light Vision.
Superior Two-Weapon Fighting (Ex): Because each head controls one arm, the zweikopf has no penalty on attack rolls for attacking with multiple weapons, and the number of attacks and the damage bonus for each weapon are calculated as though the weapon were held in a primary hand.
Sonic Vulnerability (Ex)
Electricity Resistance 5 (Ex)
Scent (Ex)
Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elven, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, Orc, Undercommon.
Level Adjustment: +0
Favored Class: Barbarian.

---

...meh, good enough. Now, rules for two players playing one two-headed creature?

Well, it shouldn't be weaker than two separate characters. That's an easy trap to fall into. This isn't really just one creature. In general, it should be treated as two separate creatures sharing a square.

Some of the things you need to consider (and my solutions to them):

Each character buys/rolls ability scores normally. Each character gets the racial modifiers applied to their scores separately. Each character uses their own ability scores for anything they do, as if they were a separate creature. (Yes, it's entirely plausible that you might see a creature with one huge bulky arm and one tiny dinky arm. Which is fine; have you ever heard a description of a blacksmith? Same deal, and that only with one head.)

Each head earns experience and gains levels independently of the other.

Any feats or flaws taken by one head apply only to that character.

Each head rolls their hit dice and adds their constitution score every level. These hit points go into a shared pool.

Any damage taken by either head is subtracted from the shared pool. Any healing applied to either head is added to the shared pool. If this pool reaches 0, both heads are disabled. If it falls below zero, both heads are unconscious. Only one head rolls to stabilize each round, and the pool only loses one hit point per round when the joint creature is not stable.

Any other creature subjecting the zweikopf to any effect must choose to target one head or the other, though this choice may be random. Each head uses their own AC and saves. Any effect which targets multiple characters can target each head individually, as if they were separate creatures.

Any items worn on the feet, fingers, hands, arms/wrists, shoulders, body, and torso slots affect both characters. (Items that function only if both of a pair are worn still function only if both are worn.) Each character has their own head, eyes, and neck slots; any magic items worn on the neck, eyes, and head slots affect only the head wearing them.

Each head can wield and use a one-handed or light weapon with no penalties. Wielding a two-handed weapon takes more coördination than the two heads can muster.

Each head rolls their own initiative. Each head gets actions (move+standard or full round) as if they were a separate character.

Each head can move the body as a normal character. However, each head's move speed is half the listed move speed. Either head can choose to veto any movement attempted by the other; if this happens, the joint creature falls prone.

If a creature provokes, each head may make a separate attack of opportunity, as if they were separate creatures.

You didn't miss, but you didn't hit him.

An incompetent DM will only ever say "you hit" or "you miss", when you hit or fail to hit, respectively. This turns combat into a pure numbers game, which is fun enough for some people but boring for most people.

A half-competent DM will, instead of saying "you hit", say "you hit him in the [location semi-arbitrarily chosen on the fly based on how much you beat his AC by and how much damage you wind up doing]!" This is more interesting, but still not perfect.

The rare good DM will also tell you how you miss. It's odd that this is rarer than the above, because it's actually very easy to do. You can set up rules for it in your head! A good DM will keep a general sense of the monster's various kinds of AC, and will declare how you failed to hit based on those, based on rules like these:

- If you rolled below 10 and didn't hit, you missed.
- If you rolled above 10 but below his touch AC, your foe ducked or otherwise deliberately evaded your attack.
- If you rolled above his touch AC but below his total AC, his armor or natural armor deflected the blow.
- If your foe has a dodge bonus, then you can use the word "dodge", and your foe dodged the attack if you rolled higher than 10+dex but lower than 10+dex+dodge.
- If your foe has a deflection bonus, same deal. If your foe has a shield bonus, same deal. If your foe has any other kinds of bonuses, same deal.

In general, a foe will let an attack sail past them if it would miss on its own. If it could actually hit them, they prefer to get out of the way. If they can't do that, they'll prefer to block it with something that can reliably do so, e.g. their shield or deflection bonus. If they can't do that, only then will they take it on their armor or thick hide (i.e., natural armor). And if they can't do that, then you hit.

This makes combat much more interesting, and communicates some information that the characters really should have, and which particularly smart players (if there is such a thing) can leverage. If they notice their foe catching most of their blows on his shield, they'll know to sunder it. If they notice their foe ducking out of the way of most of their blows, they'll know to cast grease to make him flat-footed. If they notice their foe catching most of their attacks on his armor, they'll know to use more touch attacks. And so on.

On the Virtues of "Yes, And"

You may have heard the virtues of "Yes, and" extolled. If not at DMing school, then perhaps at improv comedy school.

The thinking goes like this: Saying "no" to a player discourages them and makes them sad and makes them not be having as much fun. (Saying "no" to an improv comedian not only makes them sad, it also disrupts the pace of the banter and throws everyone off their game and makes the act less funny, so the parallels are only surface-deep.)

Consider the following:

"Yes, and" > "Yes" > "Yes, but" > "No, but" > "No"

Always aspire to be as far left on this list as you possibly can. Whenever you make a decree, ask yourself "is there a good reason I'm here, and not one to the left?" Going one to the left if you can will make it more fun for your player and more fun for you. (A possible exception is players who ask for all sorts of stupid things for no other reason than because they suspect you'll let them get away with it. I'm honestly not sure how to deal with this kind of player. It may be that this is the only situation in which an unadorned "no" can actually be justified.)

Certainly, there are good reasons to find yourself somewhere on the right. Some things are just broken. Leadership, for example. This core principle is why I go with the "yes, but" of nerfing it, rather than the "no" of banning it outright. Similarly, rather than banning Divine Metamagic ("no"), only ban nightstick abuse ("yes, but").
Rather than disallow all flaws, allow them and make an effort to exploit them to the fullest possible extent -- if people take Shaky, throw lots of ranged and flying enemies at them; if they take Murky-Eyed, throw them against lots of enemies with concealment (This works out to either a "yes, but" or a "yes, and", depending on the adventurousness of the player).
You want to buy 50 flasks of lamp oil? Yes, but several sessions later you may find a factotum casting a scorching ray at them.

But it's still always more fun for everyone to go as far to the left as possible. You want your character to be a prince? Yes, and also take this plot I've hung on that hook for you.
You want to buy dragonhide armor? Yes, and what colour is it in case you come across somebody who doesn't take kindly to you wearing a relative? (Is "Yes, if you provide the dragon skin" a "Yes, and", a "Yes, but", or a "No, but"? Probably depends on how plausible the party killing a dragon is at their level.)
See how much more fun that is for you, the player, and the party than just "yes"?

As of this writing, I just told a player "no, but". I'm sadly in the bad habit of saying "no, but" much more often than I ought, though I've mostly broken myself of the habit of outright "no"s. The question was "Can I use this homebrewed flaw?" and my answer was "No, but you may refluff a WotC-published flaw to achieve a similar effect." (Homebrewed flaws tend to be terrible, or as I heard them described once, "pants on head retarded", so I am more prejudiced against them than I am against other homebrew, even if an individual flaw seems non-terrible on the surface. Not that I'm not prejudiced against homebrew in general. But this is prejudice, which is why my wording was "I'd rather you didn't, though I may allow it if it's a deal-breaker" rather than a flat "no". An empty justification, perhaps.)

The other day, I got to say "yes, and", and it made me feel good. A player asked if he could use Central Casting: Heroes of Legend (which seems awesome, by the way). I said (provisionally) sure, and when he rolled up a character, I got to say "Oh, hey, 'human nomads' probably means a nation of sailors who didn't bothered to recolonize the land when the Subsidence came, and 'light cavalry' means riders of sharks or dolphins or porpoises, and 'skiing' means 'water skiing'." Lovely.

Keeping Track of Initiative

Even though I've concluded that the standard way of handling initiative is flawed and a group initiative system is better, I'd like to briefly cover some of the options for dealing with the standard initiative system.

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In the first game I played in, one of the players kept a list of the characters on a small whiteboard, and kept track of initiative with little numbers next to each name. This is adequate, though there's a (very) slight delay every time you look at the board and do the math to figure out what number comes after 4 or whatever, and try to find that number on the board. It was the initiative-keeper's job to announce whose turn it is and who's up next.

In that particular group, this system was much improved when the initiative-keeper got an iPad, and the iPad initiative app, which is much cleverer. You sort the characters into proper initiative order, then you push a button after each player goes, and it moves that player to the bottom of the list. An easy, simple visual representation of how soon your turn is.

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When I first started DMing, I used initiative cards (which, being a cheapskate, I created and printed myself). You put everybody's name on little cards, and write whatever initiative they rolled in one corner, and then sort them into order. After each player goes, take their card and put it at the bottom of the pile. These are handy.

Because I didn't at the time have any of the books or a laptop for consulting the SRD, I had to print out all the monsters I was going to use in condensed statblock form, so their statblock just joined the pile as their initiative card, as well as the place where I tracked how much HP each one had.

The downside of this system is that the players never know when they're going next. And the cards I printed were all different sizes, so sometimes people would get lost in the shuffle.

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When I got a laptop, I started increasingly switching over to completely paperless DMing. Because I no longer printed out the creature stats, I didn't automatically have an initiative card for each one, so I had no reason to keep this system.

So, for a while, I flirted with the technique of keeping the list on the big whiteboard behind me. I usually play in classrooms nowadays, and as long as I have the whiteboard markers out, I might as well use this vast empty space of whiteboard for something. This introduces an additional problem, in that I always sit facing away from the whiteboard (for various reasons involving being surrounded by D&D paraphernalia), so I have to turn around to see who's up next. Plus, I really should have designated a player to keep the initiative, doing it myself is a bottleneck on the whole process.

Then, for a few weeks, I switched to keeping half-cards with each character's name folded over the top of my DM screen, sorted into order. There was a gap the width of a card or two between the card of whichever character is currently going and the card of the next character up. When it's your turn, your card crosses the gap. At the top of the order, everybody's cards go back to the other side. A slightly more intuitive visual display, where you can tell who's up next by who's next on the screen.

I probably would have stuck with that method for awhile, cumbersome though it is, if I hadn't decided to switch over to the group initiative system.

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A side note, on the subject of initiative: if you're playing with group initiative, it turns out that if you run on "each group goes on the highest initiative rolled by anybody in that group", the PCs will go first nearly every time.

Consider this addendum: in any given group of NPCs, one of them took the Unreactive flaw (-6 initiative) and gave his bonus feat to another one, who took the Improved Initiative feat (+4 initiative). This should mix it up a little without significantly altering balance.

Warforged Forged For Things That Aren't War

High Seas has warforged originally designed for mining operations deep beneath the ocean, what with not needing to breathe and all.

The idea of warforged being used only for war has always struck me as a little silly: a sapient being is so much more versatile than that. It makes more sense to put the "war" part of the name from your mind, and think of them as robots like any other robots.

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Which is to say, basically, this: think of a thing that's too dangerous or too low-oxygen or gross or tedious for feeble normal fleshy people to do; somebody made a line of warforged to do that thing.

Specific ideas to play with:
- undersea exploration/work
- space exploration/work
- exploration/work on hostile planes
- mining of any sort
- sewage treatment and sewer line maintenance
- household chores
- guinea pig (specifically thinking "test pilot", however you might go about incorporating that concept into D&D)
- research ("Librarian-bot, find me all the information you can on avocados...")
- law enforcement (or traffic enforcement)
- worshipping a deity to free up the rest of the community for more useful activities (along the lines of prayer wheels, the Tibetan devices which do your praying for you)
- worshipping a deity because the deity in question is such a distasteful one that you're trying to power it up with prayer but wouldn't be able to find very many human worshippers to do it

(Side note: most of those are pretty good if I do say so myself, but holy awesome those last two are an amazing idea and I must immediately incorporate them into my campaign setting.)

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On another side of the d20 altogether, for an individual adventurer rather than an entire line of them: the notion of a warforged who broke free of his creators and is now his own guy is probably Drizz't-level cliche at this point, but there are still drastic variations on that which aren't common in D&D.

I'm thinking specifically this: (re)read I, Robot and the rest of Isaac Asimov's robot oeuvre, most of which take the form of logic puzzles or detailed explorations of a concept, where the concept is almost always a variation on "Robot X is Three Laws safe in every way, except for subtle defect Y" ("It can read minds"; "it's missing the 'or through inaction' part of the First Law"; "it's put into a situation where the laws conflict in exactly the wrong way"; "it has creativity").

I mention Asimov only because he put out the highest volume of the purest distillations of this trope. You could also consider things like Data, Marvin, or Kryten; basically any fiction that has a robot. Or just pick a random robot trope. There's such a wide variety of fiction to rip off, it's hard to know where to start!

Fixing Leadership and Thrallherd

The Leadership feat (and, by extension, the Thrallherd prestige class, which is effectively "Leadership but better") is commonly recognized as potentially game-breakingly powerful. The common response is to just ban them, and perhaps that's a sensible response. I've never encountered any players who wanted to go to the trouble of figuring out how Leadership works just for its own sake; the only reason most people want to take it is to abuse it. "Has minions" is certainly a fun character archetype, but D&D makes it awkward enough to make it undesirable.

But it's never fun to take away options. So what can we do to fix it?

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Well, the first two questions which spring to mind: what, exactly, is the problem with Leadership (and by extension with Thrallherd)? Does Thrallherd add any extra problems on top of that?

I don't know what most people use their Followers for, but they're not likely to be of much use for anything other than setting them up in a city running a business and funneling most of their profits to you, and if you want to take a feat to get a little bit of the pittance that NPCs can earn in a lifetime, that's fine. So the followers are not a problem.

While I'm on the topic of followers, I'll answer the second question before returning to the first. The main difference between the thrallherd and the Leadership feat is that the thrallherd can abuse his believers mercilessly with no penalty, while the leader takes a penalty to his leadership score if he does so. So the thrallherd can potentially have, for example, an infinite number of human sacrifices.

Solution: if that many people are going missing, the authorities are going to start investigating. Paladins and celestials are going to start coming after you, in large enough numbers as to constitute a genuine inconvenience.

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So, having dispensed with any problems inherent to followers/believers, the main problem with Leadership the cohort. Specifically, that the cohort is effectively an extra PC (a couple levels lower than the others, but who doesn't take experience away from the party).

We can fix that by obeying the rules laid out on pp. 105-106 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Specifically, two things: first, the player can attempt to attract a cohort of a particular race, class, and alignment, with no guarantee that this attempt succeeds; second, the PC can control his cohort's actions in combat, but the DM controls all the specifics of the build. So if the PC tries to attract a gray elf batman wizard, the DM is entirely free to hand him a goblin commoner instead.

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So the problem is satisfactorily solved. Done. I would, however, like to consider actual modifications to the rules, for those who aren't satisfied with the above easy solutions, or for DMs who don't want to go to the effort of building cohorts and punishing Charles Manson PCs in-character.

To wit: limit the classes. Followers and believers can only ever be NPC classes (or, far better but slightly messier, tier 6 classes). Cohorts and thralls start as NPC classes (or tier 6 classes, or maybe let them take tier 5 classes), but you can take additional feats to improve the list of classes they can take.

So, feats:

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Without the following feats, cohorts and thralls are limited to Samurai (Complete Warrior), Aristocrat, Warrior, or Commoner. Followers and believers are always limited to those four classes.

Improved Cohort I
Prerequisite: Leadership and character level 8; or thrallherd level 2
Benefit: Your cohort or thrall may take levels in Fighter, Monk, Ninja, Healer, Swashbuckler, Soulknife, Samurai (Oriental Adventures) Expert, Paladin, or Knight.

Improved Cohort II
Prerequisite: Improved Cohort I; and character level 10 or thrallherd level 4
Benefit: Your cohort or thrall may take levels in Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock, Warmage, Scout, Ranger, Hexblade, Adept, or Marshal.

Improved Cohort III
Prerequisite: Improved Cohort I-II; and character level 12 or thrallherd level 6
Benefit: Your cohort or thrall may take levels in Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Duskblade, Factotum, Warblade, or Psionic Warrior.

Improved Cohort IV
Prerequisite: Improved Cohort I-III; and character level 14 or thrallherd level 8
Benefit: Your cohort or thrall may take levels in Sorcerer, Favored Soul, or Psion.

Improved Cohort V
Prerequisite: Improved Cohort I-IV; and character level 16 or thrallherd level 10
Benefit: Your cohort or thrall may take levels in Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist, or Artificer.

Updated Myconid Monster Class

So, looking back on my myconid monster class, it really looks like the level adjustment given by WotC is preposterously high. Let's recalculate it from scratch and come up with a new, more reasonable monster class.

Consider this ECL calculator. It seems acceptable, so let's use it.

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I don't know if this calculator automatically applies Type traits, but as it asks for Type, we can only assume it does. Except it pretty clearly doesn't. Plant traits are pretty awesome, and it only partially accounts for that when it takes into account how much a plant HD is worth. You get awesome immunities for being a plant even if you don't have any plant HD. But then, their immunities aren't really much more than warforged get at (the high end of) +0LA, so maybe it's cool anyway.

I count two minor weaknesses common to all myconids - inability to speak without rapport spores or Drow Sign Language, and weird body shape that makes armor more expensive.

The only special good things myconids get are their various spores and the Sovereign's potion making:

Distress and reproduction spores effectively do nothing for a PC, and should have no effect on ECL.

Rapport spores are a telepathy effect as a single target ranged touch or area effect. Expanded Psionics Handbook offers the level 1 power mindlink, which is similar but single-target only and unlimited in range. Call it the equivalent of a minor spell-like ability.

Pacification spores are a single-target ranged touch slightly-less-bad-than-dazed for 10 rounds. daze, daze monster, and psionic daze are level 0 and 2 spells and a level 1 power, respectively, but only last for 1 round. Call this the equivalent of a level 2 spell-like ability, so medium.

Hallucination spores are a single-target ranged touch confusion spell for 1 hour. Confusion is a level 3 or 4 spell, which lasts for 1 round/level. Hallucination spores last an order of magnitude longer than confusion does, so let's call that the equivalent of at least a level 5 spell-like ability, qualifying as a major power.

Animation spores are a free zombie-only animate dead (a level 3 spell) which takes 1d4 days to take effect, and the zombies last only 1d6 weeks, but with no limit to creatures commanded. Let's call it roughly equivalent to animate dead. The sovereign already gets the hallucination spores, though, so it still has major powers.

Potion making is a little weird. I'm not sure why I counted it as "not a bonus feat" the first time 'round, given that a 6HD creature gets 3 feats, the Myconid Sovereign has 4, and "Brew Potion" clearly has a (B) next to it. This is obviously a bonus feat, so we should count it as such.

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So, plugging in the numbers, we get the following results:

Myconid : ECL : LA
Junior Worker : 1.1 : +0.1
Average Worker : 1.4 : -0.6
Elder Worker : 2.2 : -0.8
Guard : 3.3 : -0.7
Circle Leader : 5.4 : +0.4
Sovereign : 6.4 : +0.4

Which is to say, for most of its progression, the myconid is slightly weaker than a creature with class levels instead of racial hit dice, and even those levels where it's stronger, it's only very slightly stronger. Myconids are weak enough that they should have no level adjustment at all. Yes, even at level 6, with a combined +30 to stats.

...huh. I find this peculiar, and this estimate is probably low by a level or two. But I'll go with it anyway.

A pretty good stepping-stone into any melee class, particularly a tanky one: 6 levels for +8 str, +2 dex, +6 con, 2 slam attacks, and Large size. Not as good a stepping-stone into cleric, druid, or sorcerer, sacrificing 6 caster levels for a mere +6 wis and cha. A terrible stepping-stone into wizard, sacrificing 6 caster levels for +2 int.

I'm okay with that.

So let's monster class up the joint.

This is actually really easy. There are no more empty LA-levels. Each level of the myconid monster class simply advances you to the next kind of myconid.

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Level	BAB	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Age Range	Special
1	0	2	0	0	4-8	tiny, slam 1d3, distress spores
2	1	3	0	0	8-12	+2 str, +2 con, +2 int, small, slam 1d4, reproduction spores
3	2	3	1	1	12-16	+2 str, -2 dex, +2 wis, +2 cha, +1 natural armor, medium, slam 1d6, rapport spores
4	3	4	1	1	16-20	+2 str, +2 con, pacification spores
5	3	4	1	1	20-24	+2 str, +2 con, +2 wis, natural armor +2, large, slam 1d6, hallucination spores
6	4	5	2	2	24+	+2 str, +2 int, +2 cha, animation spores, potion making

HD: d8
Skill Points: 2+INT (x4 at first level)
Class Skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (nature), Listen, Move Silently, Profession (farmer), Profession (herbalist), Sense Motive, Spot, Survival.

Racial Traits:
Tiny Plant
Land speed 20 feet.

Plant Traits:
Low-Light vision.
Immunity to all mand-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, polymorph, and stunning.
Not subject to critical hits.
Plants breathe and eat, but do not sleep.

Proficiencies: Myconids are proficient with their slam attack only. They are not proficient with any armor (and armor they wear is more expensive due to their unusual shape - a myconid is nonhumanoid).

Ability Scores: A myconid begins with racial ability modifiers of -2 Str, +4 Dex, -2 Int, +2 Wis, and +2 Cha.
A myconid's strength increases by +2 at level 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Its dexterity is reduced by -2 at level 3.
Its constitution increases by +2 at levels 2, 4, and 5.
Its wisdom increases by +2 at levels 3 and 5.
Its charisma increases by +2 at levels 3 and 6.

Slam Attack: At 1st level, a myconid has two slam attacks which deal 1d3 damage. This damage increases to 1d4 at 2nd level, 1d6 at 3rd level, and 1d8 at 5th level.

Size: At 1st level, a myconid is Tiny, with a space/reach of 2.5/2.5, a size bonus of +2 to attacks and AC, a size bonus of +8 to Hide checks, and a penalty of -8 to bull rush, grapple, overrun, and trip attempts.
At 2nd level, the myconid grows to Small. Its space/reach increases to 5/5, its size bonus to attacks and AC drops to +1, its size bonus to Hide checks drops to +4, and its penalty to bull rush, grapple, overrun, and trip attempts drops to -4.
At 3rd level, the myconid grows to Medium. Its size bonuses to attacks and AC, Hide checks, and penalty to bull rush, grapple, overrun, and trip attempts are all reduced to 0.
At 5th level, the myconid grows to Large. Its space/reach increases to 10/10, it gains a size bonus of +4 to bull rush, grapple, overrun, and trip attempts, a penalty of -1 to attack and AC, and a penalty of -4 to Hide checks.

Natural Armor: A myconid gains a +1 natural armor bonus to AC at level 3. This bonus increases to +2 at level 5.

Spores: As a standard action, a myconid of 2nd level or higher can release a cloud of spores. Every level, a myconid gains a new variety of spore but does not lose access to the previous varieties. Each type of spore can be used a number of times per day equal to the myconid’s total Hit Dice (including class levels). A level 6 myconid, for example, has the first three spores (distress, reproduction, and rapport), and it can use each variety three times per day. The DC for saves to resist the effect of spores is equal to 10 + the myconid’s wisdom modifier.
Spores can be released either in a 120-foot spread or as a 40-foot ranged touch attack against a single target, as noted in the individual descriptions.
Distress: These spores alert all other myconids within the area that danger is near. They are released in a 120-foot spread.
Reproduction: These spores eventually germinate into new infant myconids. They are released as a 120-foot spread and have no detrimental effects on nonmyconids. A dying myconid of 2nd level or higher will automatically release reproduction spores.
Rapport: Myconids do not speak, but these spores enable them to establish telepathic communication with each other and with outsiders. A successful Fortitude saving throw negates the effect, but it is harmless. Rapport last for 30 to 60 minutes with outsiders, but for 8 hours with other myconids. Rapport spores can be released as either a 120-foot spread or a 40-foot ranged touch attack. Regardless of the release area, communication range is 120 feet once rapport is established.
Pacification: These spores are released as a 40-foot ranged touch attack. The target must make a Fortitude saving throw or become passive for 1 minute. Being passive is similar to being dazed, except that the target can take partial actions that don’t involve attacking. This is a mind-affecting compulsion effect.
Hallucination: These spores are released as a 40-foot ray. The target must make a Fortitude saving throw or suffer powerful hallucinations that duplicate the effects of a confusion spell for 1 hour.
Animation: When released over a dead body, animation spores begin a process that covers the corpse with purple fungus. After 1d4 days, the corpse reanimates as a servant under the control of the myconid. A servant has all the characteristics of a zombie of the same size, except that it retains its previous creature type and it cannot be turned or otherwise affected as an undead. Over the course of 1d6 weeks a myconid-animated corpse slowly decays. At the end of that period it simply disintegrates into dust.

Potion Making: A myconid of 6th level gains Brew Potion as a bonus feat. It can duplicate the following effects as a cleric or druid once per day (but only for the purpose of brewing potions): bull’s strength, cure light wounds, cure moderate wounds, cure serious wounds, delay poison, endurance, endure elements, greater magic fang, invisibility to animals, lesser restoration, magic fang, negative energy protection, neutralize poison, protection from elements, remove blindness/deafness, remove disease, remove paralysis, resist elements.

Age Range: Myconids are unlike other monster classes in that they advance through hit dice by age.
If a character’s age is below the lower age limit for a level in the myconid monster class, they may not take that level, and must take a player class level instead.
If a character’s age is over the upper age limit for their current myconid level, they may not take levels in any class other than the myconid class.

Automatic languages: none.
Bonus languages: common, terran, undercommon, drow sign language.
Myconids communicate with one another using rapport spores. They have no mouths and so cannot speak any language that requires speech, but they can understand, read, and write any language they know. Some take the time to learn drow sign language, to communicate with outsiders without using rapport spores.