On Details and Dreams

I am of the opinion that a key -- possibly the key -- to good storytelling is knowing which details to include and which to omit.

One of the many recurring problems revealed by the analysis of Twilight by Reasoning With Vampires is that Stephenie Meyer doesn't know what details are relevant and what details are not. Many pages become slogs through a endless mundanities.

Similarly: why do you hate when people tell you about their dreams? Don't lie, everybody hates when people tell them about their dreams. I posit that you hate it because of the endless stream of irrelevant, time-wasting details.

Here's the thing about dreams: They don't (generally) have (coherent) plots. That makes it extremely difficult to judge what details are relevant and what details are not, so people just default to sharing every detail, which is obnoxious and nobody cares. "...and Lorne from Angel was there, except I kept calling him 'The Host' like it said in the credits, instead of 'Lorne' like he was always referred to, and also I think I briefly was Lorne, but then he got killed..."

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Here's how to tell people about your dreams and have a remote chance of your victim not wanting to set you on fire: decide in advance what the point of your story is, then omit every detail that is not relevant to this point. If you can come up with no point, then limit your story to one or two sentences, at most. Actually, limit your story to one or two sentences even if it does have a point.

Example: I recently had a dream which combined several unrelated canons into one dream. My description of this dream was simply a list of the relevant participants and the canons from which they derived. End of story. Probably nobody cared anyway, but at least I didn't waste more than a couple sentences worth of anybody's time.

Another example: I had a dream which had the potential to provide the core of a brief joke, or thing that had the structure of a joke, in a "the secret to humor is surprise" sort of way. That joke structure was the point. (Though it wasn't necessarily actually a very good joke.) To wit:

"Dreamed that I dressed up in stormtrooper armor to inspire people to fight fascism. Everybody ran away when a cop started shooting rubber bullets into the crowd. The rubber bullets didn't hurt me, because a.) I was wearing stormtrooper armor and b.) they were actually marshmallows."

I left out (well, until people started saying "your dreams are weird", at which point the narrative shifted to "that's weird" and I provided additional details to support the "that's weird" conclusion) such details as: some friends of mine building Batman's computer, except we were calling it AIVAS; the fascism was apparently us not being permitted to fly a flag; and that I was hiding behind some innocent civilian until I realized the marshmallows weren't hurting me, at which point I went to punch the cop, which woke me up when I punched the wall.

Or, when I mention that my dreams are usually action-movie dreams: I once dreamed I was a cyborg fighting ninjas on a subway train. End of story.

Or, when the point is that I've been watching a lot of movies: occasionally my dreams will cut away from my POV altogether and show me things I'm not present for, like you might see in a movie. (Shining example: Once, while I was rescuing a princess, my dream cut away to show Darth Vader sending bounty hunters after me, then it cut back to me and bounty hunters were suddenly after me.)

These are not good dream stories, exactly, because there's no such thing as a good dream story. But, by virtue of each being short and omitting irrelevant details, I posit that they are as close to not bad as dream stories can get.

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How is this relevant to D&D?

Well: When describing a scene as DM, try to omit details that are irrelevant. The lamp doesn't matter unless it's relevant to the mood (being e.g. too dim or too bright) or relevant to combat (e.g. leaving areas of darkness or shadowy illumination in portions of the room) or expensive (in which case the players will want to steal it). The inn's menu isn't relevant unless you want to emphasize the nature of the inn (maybe it's super-fancy, in which case mention foie gras and caviar (which are not necessarily historically luxury foods, but what usually matters is the reaction of the players, not historical accuracy), or maybe it's particularly rustic, in which case the menu consists entirely of the single word "grits").

That said: never ever hesitate to mention details that aren't sight. Mention how a thing smells or feels or tastes or sounds. Most DMs omit these things so often that just using them at all can serve to improve player immersion.

On Qualifying

So I've been thinking about the Southern Magician and Precocious Apprentice feats.

Southern Magician is a regional feat from Races of Faerun. I allow people to ignore the region prerequisites of regional feats, though I might say that I wouldn't allow a character to take multiple regional feats with conflicting region prerequisites, on the assumption that many regional feats are probably balanced around a character being from only one region.

The relevant text of the feat is this: "Once per day per two spellcaster levels, you can cast a divine spell as an arcane spell, or vice versa."

"Psh," you might say, "That's a useless, crappy feat." And yes, yes it is.

Except for the mystic theurge's prerequisite: "Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells."

With Southern Magician, you can drastically reduce the level at which you qualify for Mystic Theurge. It still requires 6 ranks in two knowledge skills, so you'll never be able to reduce it below 4 (without Inspire Courage + Psychic Reformation shenanigans), but that's still better than the level 7 which would otherwise be the minimum.

Consider also Precocious Apprentice, from Complete Arcane. The relevant text: "Choose one 2nd-level spell from a school of magic you have access to. You gain an extra 2nd-level spell slot that must be used initially to cast only the chosen spell."

Precocious Apprentice allows you to cast a 2nd-level spell at 1st level. Southern Magician allows you to cast any divine spell as arcane and any arcane spell as divine. With these two feats, you meet the "Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells" requirement at level 1.

You'd obviously want to take a level in a second spellcasting class so you can actually derive some benefit from Mystic Theurge, and then you could Inspire Courage + Psychic Reformation your way into meeting the skill requirements, and take your first level of Mystic Theurge at 3, losing only 1 caster level in each of your casting classes.

This is all well-known trickery in optimizing circles.

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Here's the important question: how much of this should a DM allow?

Mystic Theurge is one of those classes that a novice will look at and say "holy amazeballs, that's a ludicrously overpowered class!", and a more experienced player will look at and issue a resounding "meh". (Unless you involve Ur-Priest or Sublime Chord, in which case an experienced player will perk right up again.)

The problem is that, if you enter it as intended, even with wizard 3/archivist 3, the most efficient combination that even remotely resembles the intent of the designers, you're still 3 levels behind on both sides. You're breaking the First Rule of Practical Optimization: Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels. Sure, you go to bed with more spells than a one-class caster starts the day with, but you'll be 1-2 spell levels behind for the rest of your career. Most optimizers agree the tradeoff is far from worth it, especially if your DM permits the 15-minute adventuring day (which he shouldn't).

If, on the other hand, you enter Mystic Theurge at level 3 (as a wizard/archivist), then you're only ever 1 caster level behind. Your spell level is on par with a sorcerer's, but you have more spells and the greater day-to-day flexibility of a prepared caster. That really is absurdly powerful.

Entry with Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1 is probably still tier 2, albeit extremely high tier 2; they get twice as many spells known and spells/day, but even that wouldn't bring their day-to-day flexibility up to the level of a prepared caster.

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So, given that Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1/Mystic Theurge builds are probably at best on par with straight tier 1, it's a little incoherent to ban it without also banning all of tier 1.

But a Wizard 1/Archivist 1/Mystic Theurge build is approximately what you might call god tier, so not banning it would be insanity.

The obvious solution: make Southern Magician and Precocious Apprentice spontaneous-only. And, because casters really don't need nice things, let's make them mutually exclusive, just in case I'm wrong about the tier of Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul 1/Mystic Theurge, and thereby make it at least 4 of one, 1 of the other. Which is still 1 level earlier than prepared casters can enter; maybe this will make prepared casters not quite so much the obvious choice.

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Precocious Apprentice
As in Complete Arcane, except:
Special: You can take this feat only as a 1st-level character.
You cannot take this feat if you have any ability to cast prepared spells. If you gain the ability to cast prepared spells, you lose the benefit of this feat.
You cannot take this feat if you have the Southern Magician feat.

Southern Magician
As in Races of Faerun, except:
Special: You cannot take this feat if you have any ability to cast prepared spells. If you gain the ability to cast prepared spells, you lose the benefit of this feat.
You cannot take this feat if you have the Precocious Apprentice feat.

On Grudges

Normally, my advice is geared more towards DMs than towards players. But today, I'm going to give players some advice, and DMs some corollary advice. I wish these things had occurred to me sooner, sitting on both sides of the table. The advice is this:

Players: Ask your DM, before the game starts, "Who should my character have a grudge against?"

--- Corollary:

DMs: Before the game starts, gently suggest to your players (but do not for a second consider forcing them) that they might consider including, in their backstory, some reason for a grudge against a certain group or organization.

Grudges are a truly excellent PC motivator.

I had a player whose PC had a grudge against Vecna, which was really handy when I had to include a cult for the PCs to massacre and determined that the cult would be a cult of Vecna.

I have a player whose PC has a grudge against slavers. So, suddenly, Nalf's Slave Market existed in Endeesy.

If your characters, before the game starts, have a grudge against whatever the primary foe of the campaign is, you don't need to put any effort at all into convincing them to do anything. They'll be the locomotive power in following your rails.

(Convincing the players to do things is a constant problem. Bribing them with cash gets old, and they never want to do heroics for the sake of heroics. One of many reasons why Chaotic Neutral is the most terrible alignment in the history of ever.)

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On the other side of the table: I've noticed that, nine times out of ten, players will include a grudge against _somebody_ in their backstory. The aforementioned examples of Vecna and slavers. I've only done it a handful of times myself, but one of the anecdotes is telling by virtue of its abject failure.

Vand Alykko was the son of two adventurers. When he was young, a band of Githyanki massacred his family and grabbed a Githyanki Silver Sword that had been taken from them years previously. From that moment on, Vand had three overriding goals: exterminate all the Gith (-yanki and -zerai, because screw all of them by association); see to it that a Githyanki Silver Sword is standard gear assigned to every beginning adventuring party; kill the Lich-Queen and use her skull as a soup bowl.

Adequate motivation for an evil character, yes? At least more subtle than the usual "greed", yes?

Vand never encountered a single Githyanki. The DM threw some kind of telepathic demon dude at the party and whenever a PC showed the slightest sign of deviating from the rails, the PC took damage. The foes were mostly priests.

Setting aside all but one of the many problems with that campaign: it would have worked much better had the foes of the campaign lined up at all with the foes of the characters, if the DM had bent the plot to the characters' backgrounds, or if the players had been able to bend their backgrounds to the plot.

So, if you're a player, ask your DM who your character should have a grudge against.

If you're a DM, suggest to your players that they might consider giving their characters a grudge against whatever group turns out to be the main foe of the campaign. Or, if you want to introduce a touch of hilarity, suggest to them that they have a grudge against whoever turns out to be a major ally. Or against fellow PCs -- I was in a party once where half the characters were racist against at least one other party member.

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.

The "Race" Problem

So there's a language problem. The other day, I described this problem as "one of the oldest conundra of the fantasy genre". Which is, of course, hyperbole; the fantasy genre is older than any of the words involved, let alone the science involved.

The problem is this: in fantasy, we need a word for various groupings of individuals, e.g., elves, humans, orcs, dwarves, halflings, etc. "Race" is the usual one, though "species" sometimes gets used. But both have meanings in English, and neither meaning lines up very well with their usage in works of fantasy.

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Once upon a time, not really very long ago at all, "race" meant the same thing in fantasy as it does in modern English, but the meanings have diverged.

Nowadays in English, "race" means something like "ethnicity" or "skin color". We've got the "black race" and the "white race" and so on, and the various races are almost entirely indistinguishable, genetically. Even phenotypically, most human races are hard to tell apart, and individuals from one race are usually within the expected range of variation for every other race.

An orc and an elf are much more dissimilar than a dark-skinned human and a light-skinned human, so "race" has become an inappropriate term for this distinction.

Moreover, we might want to keep "race" in case we want to distinguish between fantasy ethnicities -- e.g., Men of Gondor, Men of Rohan, the various Men of the East and South under Sauron's dominion. Or, for that matter: Orcs of Mordor, Orcs of Isengard, and Orcs of Moria. Or Mirkwood Elves and Lothlorien Elves. And so on. Tolkien's actually pretty good about ethnicities/subraces/whatever.

Or take my setting's distinction between Shell humans, Omorashi humans, and Romus humans. (Side note: I was horrified the other day when I realized that I had neglected to include dark-skinned humans in my campaign setting. Then I realized that no, many or most Omorashi humans have dark skin -- the one way in which the Omorashi Empire deviates from a bog-standard wutai.)

Though, really, "ethnicity" does just fine for this usage, and I'd be completely okay with discarding the word "race" from the language -- both mundane and fantastical English -- altogether.

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"Species" is sometimes used as a backup, but it has an even more specific meaning than "race" does. Two individuals are members of the same species if they can breed and produce fertile offspring. The "half-dragon" template alone means that all living, corporeal creatures are the same species as True Dragons. Dragons and gelatinous cubes are the same species! This is of course a.) preposterous and b.) not useful.

Actually, there's another, slightly more technical meaning of "species". Basically, reckon how much DNA two individuals need to have in common in order to produce viable offspring. A species is any group that has that much DNA in common. This almost could work, if you use the percentage from our world (it's a very high percentage), but you then stipulate that D&D genetics works very differently and can produce viable offspring with a much lower percentage of DNA in common. So dragons and gelatinous cubes are different species but can interbreed.

But this hurts my head by how badly it misunderstands basic biology. Not least because D&D biology pretty clearly, if not quite explicitly, doesn't run on DNA at all. (See: Living Spells, elementals, and most or all Outsiders (created, not biologically, but from the very stuff of their native planes).) There's no way for DNA to do half the things that happen with genetics in D&D. Better to leave it out and say a wizard did it. And if we're leaving out Earth biology, we should leave out the jargon of Earth biology.

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So what's left? There are lots of options, many of which have been used. But I'm partial to one that dates back roughly to the time period D&D attempts to emulate but which hasn't since acquired a technical meaning -- or, really, any meaning at all (which comes up when creationists try to use the word without realizing how meaningless it really is). The word is "kind".

Elves and humans are different kinds. Omorashi humans and Romus humans are the same kind. Mordor orcs and Isengard orcs are the same kind.

If you want to get really technical, you could also throw in superkinds and subkinds. Orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins are different kinds, but the same superkind. Arctic orcs and aquatic orcs are the same kind but different subkinds. Humans, elves, halflings, dwarves, and gnomes are the same superkind but different kinds. And so on.

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We can even set up a fairly complete D&D taxonomy!

Kingdom: distinction between creatures and objects. A creature is anything with a wisdom and charisma score (other ability scores optional). An object is anything without a wisdom and charisma score.

Subkingdom: You can further differentiate between living and non-living objects, allowing you to be old-fashioned and make the distinction Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. Normal, mundane plants and trees, as well as slimes, molds, and fungi, are living objects. Rocks and things are non-living objects. (Fun fact: disintegrate has no effect on living objects, only creatures and non-living objects.) You can also distinguish nonliving creatures (constructs, undead, deathless) and living creatures (all other creatures).

Supertype: One wants to put things like "canines" and "felines" in, but there are e.g. feliform Animals (cats, lions), Humanoids (catfolk, gnolls), Magical Beasts (displacer beasts, sea cats), Outsiders (rakshasas, hellcats), etc. So this is an example of a supertype. Since "Humanoid" is taken for a type, perhaps we shall use "anthropoid" as a Supertype to describe anything with two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso.

Type: Aberration, Animal, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Giant, Humanoid, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, Ooze, Outsider, Plant, Undead, or Vermin. (Only creatures have Types.)

Superkind: Among Humanoids: reptilians, goblinoids, near-humans, gith-s, etc. Among Outsiders: demons, devils, archons, guardinals, etc. Among Elementals: fire, water, air, earth, etc. Among Constructs: golems, living constructs, etc. Among aberrations: Illithidae, beholderkin, etc.

Subtype: Some subtypes actually indicate kind (e.g. [human], [elf]). Some indicate superkind (e.g. [reptilian], [goblinoid].) Some are merely descriptive and can be possessed by any or many Types (e.g. [aquatic], [extraplanar], often the alignment and elemental subtypes). Some indicate relationship to some other Type (e.g. [dragonblood], [augmented]). Subtype, while useful, pertains to too many levels of the taxonomy to really be included. BUT, I want to include Tanar'ri, Obyrith, Baatezu, etc, and there's not really anywhere else to put them. So let's put them, probably bafflingly, below superkind.

Kind: Among near-humans: humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Among animals: horses, dogs, etc. Among tanar'ri: succubus, balor, etc.

Subkind: Arctic elves, fire elves, aquatic elves, etc. Ponies, war ponies, horses, war horses, etc. Dogs, riding dogs, etc.

This is incredibly messy, not even very useful, and unlike biological taxonomies (where there is a single correct taxonomy that can be derived from sufficient information), it's mostly a matter of opinion. It was just an exercise.

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.)

Youth Draining Spells

This post will detail what my methodology is like when I create things, how I like to always have an existing framework, however rickety, to hang any homebrew on. It probably tells you more about me than about D&D.

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So imagine that I want to return negative levels from this:

• There are no negative levels. In place of each negative level bestowed, the victim immediately ages 3d10 years. The victim may immediately roll a fortitude saving throw at the same difficulty as removing the negative level; if this saving throw succeeds, the aging is halved. If the victim receives a restoration spell within 24 hours, the aging is reversed; otherwise, it is permanent.

...to being what they're supposed to be (which I kind of do, I've changed my mind about their badness), but I still want to include spells which prematurely age foes, so I don't have to rely on infinite ciruja plants and resurrection for all my aging effect needs.

My first instinct is to find spells that bestow negative levels, because I've already (sort of) balanced aging against negative levels. But I can find only one spell that permanently bestows negative levels: energy drain. There are several which do so temporarily, including enervation and Fell Drain anything (sonic snap, let's say). So let's briefly analyze:

• Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 temporary negative level. SL2.
• Enervation: 1d4 temporary negative levels. SL4.
• Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 temporary negative levels. SL6.
• Maximized Enervation: 4 temporary negative levels. SL7.
• Repeat/Twinned Enervation: 2d4 temporary negative levels. SL7/8.
• Maximized, Empowered Enervation: 4+1d2 temporary negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 real negative levels. SL9.

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I was going to say that if we're casting with a caster level of 12 or more, we could extend the spell to raise its duration to 24+ hours (maximum 30), thereby making it potentially permanent. But these spells all have a duration of Instantaneous, and are thus not affected by Extend Spell. Nuts. Same with Persistent Spell. Nuts.

Permanent Emanation affects only emanations (i.e., cones and bursts), and anyway is [epic] and doesn't affect the spell level. Might be able to fiat that permanency can apply to enervation, but it's not metamagic, doesn't affect the spell level, and costs XP.

Oh well. Let's say this:

• The difference between twinned enervation and energy drain is real vs temporary negative levels, and 1 spell level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Extend Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 1 and make it permanent at a high enough caster level. So the difference between temporary and real is 1 spell level.
• If Persistent Spell worked on enervation, it would increase the spell level by 6 and make it permanent under all circumstances. So the difference between  temporary and real is 6 spell levels.

Let's take the average, then, and say the difference between a temporary and a real negative level is 2 spell levels.

We're already several levels of abstraction in, and we'll get even more abstract before we're done, because there's simply very little to compare to. That's okay; I just want there to be some basis, however remote, for what I'm doing.

Okay, so, applying this psuedo-metamagic thing that makes temporary negative levels into real negative levels:

• Realized Fell Drain Sonic Snap: 1 negative level. SL4.
• Realized Enervation: 1d4 negative levels. SL6.
• Realized Empowered Enervation: 1d4*1.5 (but let's pretend, as long as we're abstracting, that a roll whose possible results are 1,3,4,6 is a 1d6, so) = 1d6 negative levels. SL8.
• Realized Maximized Enervation: 4 negative levels. SL9.
• Realized Repeat Enervation: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.
• Energy Drain: 2d4 negative levels. SL9.

Spells higher than level 9 don't matter and are ignored.

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So now we have a kludgy, hacked-together, abstracted sense of how many negative levels it's appropriate for a spell of a given level to do:

• SL4: 1 NL
• SL6: 1d4 NLs
• SL8: 1d6 NLs
• SL9: 2d4 (or 4) NLs

Long ago, we made calculations and concluded that one negative level ≈ 14.6 years. So if we wanted to create a line of spells that drain youth, we could convert:

• SL4: 14.6 years
• SL6: 1d4 x 14.6 ≈ 36.5 years
• SL8: 1d6 x 14.6 ≈ 51.1 years
• SL9: 2d4 x 14.6 (or 4 x 14.6 ) ≈ 65.7 years

We could come up with a straightforward years/SL number, but spells are exponential in power, not linear: a level 8 spell isn't just the same as two level 4 spells, and a level 4 spell isn't just the same as two level 2 spells, and so on. We need a more complicated formula.

At this point, I vaguely remember from high school algebra how to tell my graphing calculator to do this, but I don't know how to tell Excel or Google or anything else to do it. To the fresh batteries cabinet to bring my graphing calculator back to life!

I asked it for a quadratic regression, because I couldn't remember what a quadratic regression is, and it gave me a terribly ill-fitting one. Then I asked it for an exponential regression, and it gave me one that fits very well: y=5.199*1.335^x, where y is years drained and x is the spell level.

• SL0: 5.20 years
• SL1: 6.94 years
• SL2: 9.27 years
• SL3: 12.4 years
• SL4: 16.5 years
• SL5: 22.0 years
• SL6: 29.4 years
• SL7: 39.3 years
• SL8: 52.5 years
• SL9: 70.0 years

Certainly not terrible. But hm: I kind of don't want there to be a cantrip that can age a person at all, and I kind of want the lowest level aging spell to take 1 year. So I'm going to finesse the numbers a bit and wind up with...

• SL0: 0.50 years
• SL1: 2.54 years
• SL2: 5.32 years
• SL3: 9.14 years
• SL4: 14.4 years
• SL5: 21.5 years
• SL6: 31.4 years
• SL7: 44.8 years
• SL8: 63.3 years
• SL9: 88.5 years

...good enough!

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Now, some fiddling to match these numbers up with dice... Consider this chart:




The coloured numbers indicate how many of that size die would be needed to average out to approximately the desired number of years. They are colour-coded: red is most accurate, orange less accurate, yellow even less accurate, and blue least accurate of all. We could just use all the red ones, substituting for orange ones when there isn't a red one at that level, but that winds up with an ugly and inelegant progression of 1d10, 2d8, 4d6, 4d10, 7d8, 10d8, 6d20, 16d10.

Imagine we want to use all the same size dice. If so, you can clearly see that the d8 column is the most accurate.

But I don't want to use all the same size dice, because I'm biased against rolling large numbers of dice at once. We could, oh, say, start at d4, and bump up a die size every time we'd be rolling more than 6 dice at once. Then let's smooth them out a little when the die size would jump 2 at once, or would stay the same for 3 levels in a row.

Instead, we will consider that many spells vary in effective based on caster level. Oho! Everything suddenly got really complicated all up in this joint.

Let's pretend that the average caster has a minimum caster level of twice the spell level, minus 1. Then let's cap each spell's effectiveness at, oh, let's say, approximately twice that. Let's aim for the spell reaching its target effectiveness halfway between when it can first be cast and when it caps out.

To simplify slightly, the SL2 version can just be a flat 1d4. And let's just skip a couple spell levels where they make it particularly awkward.

So let's go with this:

SL1: 1 year
SL2: 1d4 years
SL3: 1d8 years per 4 caster levels, up to 3d8
SL5: 1d8 years per 3 caster levels, up to 6d8
SL7: 1d8 years per 2 caster levels, up to 12d8
SL9: 1d8 years per caster level, up to 24d8

---

Negative levels automatically take effect, but you can save against them becoming permanent 24 hours later. Moreover, the relevant spells and abilities always call for an attack roll. So let's have, oh, let's say the ability to defend against it with a Fortitude save. No need for any of that touch or ranged touch stuff.

But then the question arises: why would a character ever cast any of these spells? If your target is already old, or you use the very high level ones, it might kill them. Otherwise, you might advance them an age category or two. I suppose 1, 3, or 6 irreversible damage to three ability scores is nothing to sneeze at. Even so, the level 1 and 2 versions will never do enough aging with one application to actually advance the target an age category.

So I'm thinking one of two things: either you gain X temporary hit point for each Y years you drain, or your age is reduced by 1 for each Y years you drain.

I don't really want youthening to be so easy, so I'm inclined towards the temporary hit point thing. Usually, you get 5 temporary HP per point of thing you do, but this does a somewhat greater number of points of things, so I'm inclined to say one per one.

Let's next consider what spell lists this line is appropriate for. Let's go with... Cleric, Blackguard, Blighter, Dread Necromancer, Hexblade, Mortal Hunter, Sor/Wiz. The classes with only 4 levels of spells don't get the weakest or the strongest one.

Soooo...

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Youth Drain, Least
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 1, Blighter 1, Dread Necromancer 1, Sor/Wiz 1
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1 year.Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 1 year old.

Youth Drain, Lesser
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 2, Blackguard 1, Blighter 2, Dread Necromancer 2, Hexblade 1, Mortal Hunter 1, Sor/Wiz 2
As youth drain, except the target ages only 1d4 years.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 5 years old.In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.

Youth Drain
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 3, Blackguard 2, Blighter 3, Dread Necromancer 3, Hexblade 2, Mortal Hunter 2, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Short (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
You point at your target and years evaporate from their lifespan. They age 1d8 years per 4 caster levels (maximum 3d8 years). This is never beneficial to the target.
In addition, you gain 1 temporary hit point for each year the target loses. These temporary hit points last for 1 hour.
Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 10 years old.

Youth Drain, Greater
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 5, Blackguard 3, Blighter 5, Dread Necromancer 5, Hexblade 3, Mortal Hunter 3, Sor/Wiz 5
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 3 caster levels (maximum 6d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 25 years old.

Youth Drain, Grand
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 7, Blackguard 4, Blighter 7, Dread Necromancer 7, Hexblade 4, Mortal Hunter 4, Sor/Wiz 7
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per 2 caster levels (maximum 12d8 years)Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 75 years old.

Youth Drain, True
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 9, Blighter 9, Dread Necromancer 9, Sor/Wiz 9
As youth drain, except the target ages 1d8 years per caster level (maximum 24d8 years).Material Component: Any manmade object greater than 250 years old.

Multiclass Experience Penalties and Racial Favored Classes

So I've been convinced by the arguments that that multiclass penalties don't accomplish what they're intended to accomplish.

The idea behind multiclass penalties and racial favored classes is twofold: first, Frankenstein builds full of 1- and 2-level dips are inelegant and should be disincentivized; and second, there should be some mechanical indicator of a character's cultural predilections.

The second point is good and sound and a reason to preserve racial favored classes in some form, and I'll come back to it.

The first point falls apart in two ways: alpha, that the system currently penalizes a build full of nothing but your favored class and 1-level dips not at all, instead penalizing you if you have, say, lots of levels in two classes and a dip in one other; beta, that high-tier characters (usually spellcasters, whose prime directive is Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels) are only hurt by dips, while low-tier characters (usually mundane combat) can stand to benefit greatly from dips. Multiclassing penalties are one more instance of Melee Can't Have Nice Things.

So we dump the multiclassing penalty system like a sack of soggy garbage.

But wait! That second reason! There needs to be some mechanical indicator of a character's racial predilections! Because almost everyone underestimate the power of culture to a ludicrous extent. Let alone built-in biological instinct! So that hardcore needs to be a thing.

But hey, when I first created the Versatile Alignment feat, I said to myself, "maybe this is something that characters should get as a bonus feat with respect to their racial favored class". Because that would make sense.

So let's do that. Indeed, let's go slightly further and pull in Monastic Training and Knight Training:

---

Characters take no experience penalties for multiclassing. Instead, they gain a bonus feat related to their racial favored class, even if they do not meet the feat's prerequisites.
Any character may choose the Versatile Alignment feat with respect to their racial favored class.
A character whose racial favored class is Monk may choose between Versatile Alignment(Monk) or Monastic Training from the Eberron Campaign Setting.
A character whose racial favored class is Paladin may choose between Versatile Alignment(Paladin) or Knight Training from the Eberron Campaign Setting.
A character whose racial favored class is "any" may choose between Versatile Alignment (with respect to any one class of their choice), Monastic Training, or Knight Training.

---

This leaves characters with favored classes that have no alignment requirement slightly disenfranchised. I don't want to give them anything with any actual power, only something that opens up more options. Maybe a choice between Knight Training (your favored class) and Monastic Training (your favored class)? Meh, maybe. I'll have to look through feats and find some of the ones that are mostly fluff, which no sane person would normally choose to take but might accept if handed for free.

Adjucating Aging Effects

So, as I said a few posts ago, I kind of like my solution to the problem of how annoying negative levels are to to be inflicted with.

But I'm pretty confident that my negative-levels-are-aging system isn't actually balanced against real negative levels, and inherently couldn't possibly be. And, though it makes the game easier and simpler for people who don't already know how negative levels work, it does make it more complicated for people who do. So I'm considering going back to the original negative levels system.

But I love aging effects, and want to them to matter in the game as much as possible. I've already got the rule that every time you're resurrected, you gain some age, but resurrection doesn't happen all that often.

There are only two monsters I know of (from sourcebooks I allow) that have age-increasing powers:

• The phane, an epic-level (CR25) monster which has the ability, after putting characters into temporal stasis, to age them at a rate of 1d4 years/round, no save. It specifies that targets take the physical, but not mental, effects of aging.
• The ciruja plant (CR3) from Dragon Compendium. After a fairly complex and reasonably easy-to-avoid process of paralyzing the victim then burrowing into their flesh, it starts draining youth at a rate of 1d10 years/round, no save. It, too, specifies that "this has no positive benefits for the victim", specifically calling out things that "might grow more powerful with age" (e.g., True Dragons).

Obviously, there's going to be an epidemic of ciruja plants growing everywhere in my campaign world very shortly.

---

But this brings up a good point: I really should have rules for adjudicating harmful aging effects in general. Obviously, you shouldn't ever gain any benefit from being prematurely aged.

I'm going to immediately discard the possibility of "you advance an age category without gaining the benefits, but you could gain the benefits next time you advance an age category".

Instead, I propose this solution: characters, once they've been subject to such an effect, track their physical age and their mental age separately.

If you advance an age category in physical age, you gain the physical penalties. If you advance an age category in mental age, you gain the mental benefits. You can't die of old mental age, but once you hit Venerable you stop benefiting. You can die of old physical age once you pass Venerable.

Harmful effects, like the phane, the ciruja, or being resurrected, only ever advance your physical age. Beneficial effects, like reincarnate or any potion-of-youth type effects we might choose to include (probably necessary if age is to be an important thing, though I could be really mean and make them apply to both physical and mental aging at once), also only ever reduce your physical age.

This has the side benefit of doing away with the "age to Venerable. get reincarnated. repeat." cycle of infinite mental score increases.

I suppose it also means True Dragon advancement is mental, but that's unlikely to ever matter in a session.

It's one extra number to keep track of somewhere on your sheet, but it's worth it.

Custom Reincarnate Tables 3: Monstrous Humanoids

If you are looking for (or wish to return to) the central list of my updated Reincarnate tables, click here.

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Roll 1d200.

Dice	Creature	Src
1-5	Aarakocra	MoFae-11
6-7	Alaghi	MoFae-14
8	Annis	MM-143
9-10	Arkamoi	MM5-184
11-12	Blackspawn Raider	MM4-130
13	Bluespawn Godslayer	MM4-140
14-16	Boggle	MM2-33
17	Braxat	MM-37
18-20	Centaur	MM-32
21-24	Chitine	MoFae-26
25-27	Chosen One	MoFae-27
28-30	Crazed Kuo-Toa	MM5-94
31-34	Crow-Headed Tengu	OA-194
35-38	Dekanter Goblin	MoFae-53
39-41	Derro	MM-49
42	Desmodu	MM2-62
43-45	Doppelganger	MM-67
46-48	Dragonkin	Draco-150
49-50	Dusk Hag	EbCS-284
51-53	Equiceph	MHb-61
54	Ethereal Doppelganger	MM2-94
55-58	Firenewt	MoFae-48
59-61	Frost Folk	FrostB-130
62-63	Gargoyle	MM-113
64	Gloom	ELHb-192
65-67	Goatfolk	MM3-63
68	Greathorn Minotaur	MM4-100
69	Green Hag	MM-143
70-72	Greenspawn Sneak	MM4-148
73	Greenspawn Zealot	MM5-74
74-77	Grimlock	MM-140
78-80	Groundling	MoFae-57
81	Hadrimoi	MM5-185
82-83	Hannya	OA-166
84-85	Harpy	MM-150
86	Hebi-No-Onna	OA-167
87	Human-Headed Tengu	OA-194
88	Jackal Lord	FFolio-105
89-91	Kappa	OA-169
92-94	Khaasta	FFolio-115
95	Kopru	MM2-134
96-98	Kuo-Toa	MM-163
99	Kuo-Toa Exalted Whip	MM5-95
100-103	Lashemoi	MM5-186
104-106	Loxo	MM2-144
107	Marzanna	FrostB-144
108-109	Meazel	MoFae-65
110	Medusa	MM-180
111-112	Minotaur	MM-188
113-114	Nagatha	MM4-102
115-117	Nycter	MM3-112
118-120	Ophidian	FFolio-133
121	Ormyrr	MM2-167
122-124	Quaggoth	MoFae-75
125	Queen Abeil	MM2-22
126	Redspawn Arcaniss	MM4-152
127	Redspawn Berserker	DMagic-118
128-129	Rhek	BoED-181
130-132	Rokuro-Kubi	OA-190
133-135	Sahuagin	MM-217
136	Scaled Stalker	MHb-68
137	Scorpionfolk	MM2-221
138-139	Sea Hag	MM-144
140	Skindancer	MM3-158
141	Soldier Abeil	MM2-22
142	Spell Weaver	MM2-187
143	Spelleater Sarkrith	FFolio-145
144-145	Stinger	MoFae-80
146	Thane Sarkrith	FFolio-146
147	Thoon Infiltrator	MM5-109
148-151	Thri-Kreen	MM2-195
152-154	Tigbanua Buso	OA-148
155	Tsuno	OA-197
156	Turlemoi	MM5-187
157-159	Vassal Abeil	MM2-22
160-162	Wemic	MoFae-84
163-166	Whitespawn Hordeling	MM4-156
167-168	Whitespawn Hunter	MM4-158
169-170	Yak Folk	MM2-200
171-173	Yeti	FrostB-162
174-176	Yeti	OA-199
177	Yuan-Ti Abomination	MM-264
178	Yuan-Ti Halfblood	MM-264
179	Yuan-Ti Ignan	MM4-188
180-182	Yuan-Ti Pureblood	MM-262
183-186	Yurian	FFolio-198
187	Zern	MM4-195
188-189	Zern Blade Thrall	MM4-198
190-191	Aberration	reroll
192-193	Fey	reroll
194-195	Giant	reroll
196-197	Humanoid	reroll
198-200	Other	reroll