Cryptid Corner: Raskovnik

I've re-assigned the old Cryptid Wednesday posts to a category called "Cryptid Corner," the new name of this feature. I've left the old names of the posts but the tags are all corrected. Today we go to the Balkans for a cryptid plant rather than a creature as such.

Raskovnik

In remote and distant fields grow an herb called raskovnik, or thief's clover. It grows in close proximity with other herbs, and an untrained eye could pass over a specimen a hundred times without ever espying it. The herb can be found with some difficulty by druids, yielding at best 1 quatrefoil per hour. Tortoises and snakes are quite capable of finding it, and will be able to direct a character to a clump of 1-6 quatrefoils per hour. This never reaches more than 10 quatrefoils found in a given field in a month.

When the stem of a raskovnik plant is placed in a lock for 1 turn, the lock will be opened (it is permanently broken). This applies to all non-magical locks, regardless of complexity. Inserting a raskovnik stem into a trapped lock will trigger the trap on a roll of 1-2 in 1d6. A Wizard Locked door can only be opened by a number of raskovnik quatrefoils equal to the level of the magic-user who cast the spell. Other magical locks are similarly effected.

A tea can be brewed from at least six raskovnik plants in eight ounces of water. This must be steeped for at least 4 hours to gain the desired effect, and the plants so brewed lose their lock-opening powers. The remaining tea is strongly concentrated and, if drunk, will grant the ability to detect the largest treasure within 120' of the imbiber for 2-12 turns.

Rodents have an insatiable appetite for raskovnik. Hedgehogs, giant rats and other rodent-like creatures within 60' of a raskovnik plant (living or cut) can smell it and will seek to devour it immediately, ignoring anything that comes between itself and the plant.

Actual Play: Dyson's Delves, part II

My players finished the romp through the Cinder Throne, so I can share that this was the map that I was using without it being a spoiler per se. I really loved a few things about this dungeon and how it turned out.

Last night's group was as different as could be from the previous delve. Before there had been a fighter, an elf and two thieves. This time there were two fighters, a dwarf, two clerics and two elves, including the fighter and elf from the last session. It helped that the first fighter and the dwarf were level 3 and the other fighter had been sitting right below level 3 from a previous adventure. The troglodytes that had seemed like a bad idea the previous time were pretty readily dealt with this time. A random encounter with a party of Veterans turned into some harmless parlaying; the fact that it happened as they were leaving the troglodyte room and most of the fighters got sick from the stench helped with that.

The dwarf PC's hardiness proved itself when a giant black widow spider got the jump on the party; it bit him but dwarves are great at saving versus poison. The party was able to set fire to the webs and do some damage to the other spider hiding in the web-filled room, and take it out before it could do more damage. The Moldvay rules really encourage setting stuff on fire, and particularly spiderwebs if you read the description of the Web spell – the black widow spider webs are explicitly like the spell. I guess the logical deterrent would be to have something valuable like a scroll, or a human voice crying out from the spiderweb; otherwise a room full of webs is an invitation to set fire.

I had put an arrow trap in the angled hall with a niche toward the center of the map. The PCs used a 10-foot pole to prod the niche and trigger all the arrows, and the elves found the secret hole in the wall with some gold; if they hadn't prodded ahead, there was a second pressure plate in front of the gold that would've fired arrows. This carefulness went to the wind with the dead end a bit further on, where one of the elves promptly fell into a pit trap. There's just something about pit traps that gets 'em every time.

Then, because variety is the spice of life, I threw in some OD&D gnolls. Not that they're mechanically any different from Moldvay gnolls, which fit the hyena-man variety, but the vibe was a little non-standard when I was doing the dungeon stocking and I enjoy simple reskins like this. One of the elves wisely used a Sleep as the gnolls had spent their surprise round throwing axes at the PCs, so that was ended rather quickly. It wound up with one of the long-suffering fighters getting a Sword +2, so that was worth it.

(As a side note: while people buying modules often complain about generic loot like weapons with pluses, in play I've always found players quite happy with them. A Sword +2 is nothing to sneeze at, even if it doesn't have a particular backstory or weird power.)

After the gnolls they managed to get pretty much straight on to the area at the bottom of the map, going down into the room at the base, which had a weird pillar that would sometimes tell the truth and sometimes lie (by random roll). I can't remember which particular random generator I pulled this one from, but it worked and the PCs used questioning to figure out which room had the crown they were seeking. So they went to that room and saw the crown.

Now, I should mention that the dungeon walls bore scorch marks, pretty much throughout, as an atmospheric thing. I placed the crown in the one room with no scorch marks, and that single detail freaked the players out. They wound up dragging a heavy chest via rope, to make sure it was not trapped, and then checking almost every element of the room for traps. Except for the ceiling.

So when they finally made the plan for the elves to grab the crown and run, with everyone else already cleared out of the dungeon, the gray ooze lurking on the ceiling made short work of the elves. The red herring of some horrible fire trap had gotten the players to carefully check every aspect of the room except the one that had the actual danger, including performing a Detect Magic.

The other PCs came back and managed to get the crown, which was worth 5000 GP, and rightly was the crux of the adventure. Gray oozes are very slow and this one was already "feeding", so it ended well for the more established fighters and clerics. It's fascinating for me when plans go like that; I had decided in advance that only specific inspection of the ceiling would give hints to the ooze and the players didn't check it. If they had, they would have had to deal with the ooze otherwise.

I can't over-emphasize how happy I was with Dyson's map. The three-dimensional elements and hidden chutes were really quite neat and added a dynamic to the adventure that I enjoyed very much. I played with the "S" circles being like manhole covers that the players lifted to get to the chutes below.

I stocked it using Moldvay's dungeon stocking rules, which usually lead to a pretty interesting time, and used various substitutions as I saw appropriate. One thing I've been careful to do is add 1d10-5 to anything with tens of coins, or 1d100-50 to anything with hundreds, which results in coin amounts that don't feel arbitrary. (I never give exact totals until the PCs are out of the dungeon, of course.) I have generally replaced about half of the "typical" encounter types with unusual and bizarre things; it creates a memorable impression without being too much in weird-land.

So the game goes on, and the next adventure I might have a couple options available for the players to pick a direction. Overall Moldvay works really well in practice, even if it has a few pyromaniacal tendencies.

Spell Effects in the Dungeon, Greyhawk Style

Back last summer, I had done a post called Spell Effects in the Dungeon looking at the spells in Men & Magic as spells that had been cast well in advance of player characters coming down through a dungeon. In this follow-up I will be looking at the spells from Supplement I: Greyhawk and their potential impact on a dungeon.

One note is that Greyhawk has Permanent Spell, so I'm disregarding the duration limits for these spells. Assume that the magic-user is either an archmage, or has scrolls or other access to Permanent Spell. Note that this is a general improvement for having spells pre-cast in the dungeon.

Darkness, 5' Radius. Make one square of 10' map into absolute darkness. Great for setting the mood or hiding a devious trap. Or create the apparently infinite pit trap: Darkness and Silence at the bottom of a 10' pit. People fall in and you can neither hear nor see them.

Web. Nothing like a big sticky mess for characters to wade into. Very good for lining pit traps, the bottom of a chute, or in front of the lair of a monster.

Magic Mouth. There's a lot of potential for these. Greyhawk lists the possibility of using them attuned to alignment, or specific individuals. This makes them excellent alarms, but they're also good if you want to give a riddle, a joke or invoke a trap. For instance, consider a Magic Mouth rigged to deliver the command word to a wand of Fireball - a perfect explosion trap. The structure of the spell gives a perfect excuse why dungeon denizens don't set off the trap, too. Of course, this can be used on other kinds of wand to make different traps.

Pyrotechnics. The fireworks variant is good if you combine it with the Magic Mouth wand trick detailed above. A permanent smoke effect can create a nice low-visibility area for a trick or trap, or a fake "dragon" lair that will freak a low-level party out.

Explosive Runes. Well, this one is pretty obvious. BOOM!

Rope Trick. A rope ascends upward and disappears into another dimension. Pulling it will bring whatever is at the top of the rope down on the characters. My personal inclination is to stick a bear or two up there, but it can be pretty much anything you'd like to have inquisitive PCs bring down on their own heads.

Suggestion. You can pretty much have an otherwise intelligent character doing anything the magic-user would like. It's prime for just plain weird encounters – why is that guy carrying a bucket of acid back and forth? The wizard told him to.

Ice Storm. If you are using 10' squares, in a dungeon, the ice storm can impact 27 squares - a big swath of the dungeon. If temperatures cooperate, this will let you create a frozen sub-environment with slick floors, icy hailstones, and/or snow - or with permanency, a perpetual ice storm. If is too warm, you can wind up flooding the same area.

Repulsion. Creative casting can make a room, area or object unapproachable in a spectacular way. Most interesting if PCs try using missile weapons on it.

Delayed Blast Fireball. BOOM!

Reverse Gravity. It's pretty obvious what you need to do here. Three 10' cubes have reverse gravity and characters entering them fall upward. Very interesting in a room where only part of this is true. Extra fun bonus: make the ceilings more than 10' high.

Charm Plants. The spell description says explicitly that it's a good warning system. Not to mention things like strangulation ivy.

Mass Invisibility. What's better: six invisible dragons or a small invisible army (300 men plus horses)? Either way this packs some punch.

Symbol. This is of course made to go into the dungeon. The Death symbol is pretty much concentrated havoc, though others such as Discord have roleplaying potential.

Polymorph Any Object. This spell pretty much lets you make anything you want.

Time Stop. Using this as a trap may cause some very interesting philosophical debate. If you want to make creative solutions necessary instead of a Dispel Magic, stick the nastiest monster you can find in the affected area.

Prismatic Wall. When you really need to stop someone from getting in.

Now, I could go and list the Limited Wish and Wish spells - but they pretty much would let you do anything you want. That's endlessly creative but has no specific ramifications to look at. Overall I thin the Greyhawk spells have a lot to contribute to the dungeon by having them cast in advance of PCs arriving.

Reconstructing Holmesian Combat

The Holmes "Blue Book" rules are well known as the original "Basic" rules for D&D, a bridge between OD&D and what we now know as the "classic" line – B/X, BECMI and Rules Cyclopedia D&D. They also have assorted references to AD&D, although few rules actually reference the advanced version in anything more than a one-liner.

Over the last few months, the Zenopus Archives have been excavating a typed manuscript that Holmes had turned over to TSR, before (relatively arbitrary) changes were made to the original. You can read the whole series here; it has gotten up to the monster section and is revealing that the original picks were a bit more diverse and OD&D-inspired.

But here I want to focus on Holmes's combat system, because it kind of went astray in the TSR version. The blue book is infamous for a rule that makes daggers super-weapons and two-handed swords virtually useless. It also makes fighters (always d6 damage) less useful than most monsters, who do variable damage. But this turns out not to be how Holmes actually intended it. Instead we find that Holmes didn't actually include damage in his monster listings and assumed that everything had 1d6 for damage and for hit dice. This draws things even and actually puts a first level fighter at a slight advantage over the orc, particularly if said fighter has a high Constitution score. Statistically it works out about the same as OD&D's 1d6+1 hit points for the fighter at first level.

Order of combat was based on Dexterity just as in the published blue book. Zenopus points out the OD&D basis of this rule, although Holmes used it more strictly than the OD&D FAQ implies. But where it gets really interesting is in Holmes's description of the melee round. He described it precisely - "Each round consists of an exchange of two blows with ordinary weapons." When this was excised from the blue book as printed by TSR, it made a muddle of the dagger rules, which simply followed normal weapons such as the sword in striking twice. Two-handed weapons and missile weapons only went once in a Holmes round.

This is a much more workable system than the published blue book, which slowed two-handed weapons down to 1 strike per 2 rounds, while leaving daggers at full speed. It also has a number of interesting implications. First, it makes melee combat quite powerful in comparison to using spells and special abilities, since the latter goes off only once in a round; melee characters are working twice as fast as their spellcasting counterparts. Second, it makes parrying an attractive option: a PC can opt to make two strikes in a round, or one strike and a parry, or even to do a double parry.

An interesting wrinkle is that TSR added the concept that shields do not count toward AC when retreating; it's a rather cumbersome rule that seems more in line with some AD&D combat than basic or OD&D. Also, through some analysis of the examples of combat, Zenopus comes to the conclusion that magic-users can't cast spells the round after they are struck in combat. This follows a rough order of spells, missile fire, then two bouts of melee.

This is one of the more interesting combat systems devised for D&D. It needs some tweaking, particularly in the case of morale, and it needs a rule to make two-handed weapons worthwhile, but it's got significant advantages over the system presented in the published blue book. The double melee attacks per round and parry rules make for some rich tactical choices, and create the potential to expand to extra attacks at higher levels without throwing everything out of whack. You can give fighters 3 attacks for every 2 of lower level opponents, without it seeming absurd or doing AD&D's odd alternating. It would also work well with claw/claw/bite type attack routines that the Monster Manual is fond of without making the monsters using it unbeatable attack machines. At the same time, it preserves the simplicity of OD&D's d6 based damage and hit dice, without making fighters underpowered. Moldvay fighters are much better than their blue book counterparts, but in the original Holmes combat system they actually come out looking pretty good.

Once Zenopus's series is done, I think this may create the basis for a really robust set of Blue Book D&D house rules, which I could see becoming a go-to for my future games.

Actual Play: Dyson's Delves

In my latest B/X game, I looked through some maps from Dyson Logos, picked one (I'll share which map once the PCs have finished exploring) and populated it with the Moldvay rules. I used the random encounter list for monster picks, but "improved" on the results with weird and different creatures. I riffed on the dungeon's contents to come up with a backstory for it involving elves and a crown, and off we went.

Once again I used Geoffrey McKinney's Dungeon of the Unknown for some of the oddities, including a glop and one of the chimerical beasts. (C15, a smilodon/scorpion creature) that was met with some ferocity from the PCs. They used fire to slay the glop, and chokepoints to fend off my own Devil Monkeys. The leaping capability of the Devil Monkeys made the initial encounter really dramatic, as they lept clear 15 feet over an underground pool to attack the elf who thought he was safe taking pot shots.

Moldvay's dungeon generation gives a good balance of rooms. I supplemented it with the AD&D DMG, the Dungeon Alphabet, Ready Ref Sheets, and Dungeon of the Unknown for inspiration. A mix of traditional monsters and new / weird ones hits my sweet spot for D&D play. There's new and challenging encounters, and ones where player familiarity kicks in, like the troglodytes the players have not yet taken care of.

The most striking thing about last night's game, though, was how my B/X campaign has worked out fairly well in terms of having a large player pool. In the previous session, several PCs moved on from the Keep on the Borderlands to a town upriver. But none of those PCs made it to last night's session; only the player whose PC had died in the Tower of the Stargazer was in common between the two, so the PCs actually were at the Keep at the start of the game. It's an interesting shift in dynamics. There are a total of 10 living PCs with experience in the roster. Several new 1st level PCs went along with a 2nd level character (dating back to the Stonehell game I was running last year) who made 3rd on this adventure.

One thing I've noticed out of this is that the PC group's capability is really driven by the level of the highest level fighters. Since they can take the front lines during a fight, fighters over level 1 really take first level encounters out handily. And of course, numbers still reign supreme; higher level encounters with one monster don't make as much difference as more lower level opponents.

B/X D&D is holding up pretty well. I've noticed it has just enough guidelines in the rules to be firm on certain things, but not overwhelming with detail like AD&D 1e can get. A brief discussion of river transport clarified that for me: it has what I want as a referee but no more than I need. It's really a good, straightforward implementation of OD&D in the ways that matter. In practice I am finding it adapts to what I want a bit more smoothly than either Holmes or Swords & Wizardry did. OD&D of course retains a special spot in my heart, but I have been happy with B/X on the table.

Cryptid Wednesday: Devil Monkeys

This vicious primate originated in Appalachia but is prime for your fantasy realm.

Devil Monkeys

Hit Dice: 2+2
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Attacks: 2 Claws (1d4) or Bite (1d6)
Saving Throw: 16
Special: None
Move: 18
Alignment: Chaotic
Challenge Level/XP: 2/30

Devil Monkeys are a form of primates ranging from 3' to 4' in height, covered in shaggy fur and with long, bushy tails. They are extremely fleet of foot and can leap up to their full 18' movement range in any direction. In combat, they rely upon their vicious sharp claws, though they will sometimes bite. If it makes two successful claw attacks in a round, instead of dealing damage, the Devil Monkey may try to rend armor off of a victim. This takes 2 rounds and the victim may make a saving throw each round to break free of the monkey's grip.

These monkeys live in small troops, generally of 10-30 individuals. A large troop may have a leader, who has AC 6 [13] and 4 HD (CL 4/120). Their typical habitat is in the forests of temperate mountains, and Devil Monkeys have a particular hatred of dogs. Their primitive language may be comprehended using a Speak With Animals spell.

In the mountains where they live, Devil Monkeys are spoken of in hushed tones. They have been known to rip the roofs of covered wagons off to attack the humans inside.

Of Tricks and Traps

The fear of "death", its risk each time, is one of the most stimulating parts of the game. It therefore behooves the campaign referee to include as many mystifying and dangerous areas as is consistant [sic] with a reasonable chance for survival (remembering that the monster population already threatens this survival). For example, there is no question that a player's character could easily be killed by falling into a pit thirty feet deep or into a shallow pit filled with poisoned spikes, and this is quite undesirable in most instances.
- The Underworld & Wilderness Adventure, p. 6.

The paragraph above is likely to have been written by the very same author who would later pen S1 Tomb of Horrors; what a difference a few years makes.

When you read the list that runs beneath this text, the tricks and traps are definitively different from the list in Appendix G of the Dungeon Masters Guide. It's mostly about confusing mappers and getting PCs lost in the dungeon rather than actually killing them; teleporters, illusions, deceptive corridors, stairs going up or down multiple levels, etc. Whereas by the time Gygax wrote the DMG, it was primarily traps that shoot, stab, burn, drop or poison hapless characters, possibly to their doom. None of this is listed in the OD&D ideas, although there is a pit trap in the sample map. It is not so much an elaboration as a shift in the basic workings of tricks and traps from map hazards to PC killers.

I don't think that it's entirely coincidental that the change occurred after Gygax had started to put out printed dungeons that are very different from his original Greyhawk megadungeon. The difference between Dungeon Geomorphs - which are close to what we've seen of the Greyhawk maps in style - and dungeons like G1, G2 and G3, or B2 and S1, is a shift from dungeons where mapping is a key difficulty to more "logical" (but still nonlinear) dungeons that TSR put out in its heyday. Traps reflected the fact that combat and hazards were more likely to involve PCs getting hurt or killed than lost.

My love for traps stems from the idea that D&D is basically a hidden map game. Both types of trap have the same basic premise: that navigation of the dungeon should be inherently unsafe. A dungeon is an area hostile to intruders; if it weren't, it would already be cleaned out. But the failure state of the "damage" trap is more quickly resolved than that of the "get lost" trap. In the latter case, the referee is opening up the door for a session of players just trying to find a way out. With a damage trap you either get hurt or you don't.

One of the big advantages of damage traps over get-lost traps is that it's easier to create ways to avoid damage traps. If an arrow trap is triggered by a tripwire, then simply not touching the tripwire leaves you safe, trap avoided. You can't really do that with a space distortion corridor (suggested in U&WA) designed to screw up mapping; the referee has just messed with your map but no idea why is given.

None of which is to say that get-lost traps have no place in the game. Dead end corridors, one of the original suggestions, are a great feature - particularly if a wandering encounter begins chasing the PCs at a good clip. One way doors are also interesting, because they force the PCs to find a different way out without getting into the whole, "Hey, you're lost and your existing map is FUBAR." And teleporters are just fun, although I prefer the kind that have to be actively touched - there are several great examples in Stonehell that lead to really interesting scenarios. But on the whole I think that get-lost traps should be used sparingly.

It seems logical to concentrate traps in front of valuable objects or key lairs, but I think this attitude can be mistaken. If traps always come right in front of the treasure, then players will catch on to the pattern. One trick I particularly like is having traps poised before a turn that leads to a dead-end. Intelligent dungeon denizens will only go down such corridors carefully, but they make a great fake-out moment in dungeon design. Logically what these traps are doing is to catch intruders who are unfamiliar with the local architecture.

One thing that OD&D really got right was the rule for triggering traps: "Traps are usually sprung by a roll of 1 or 2 when any character passes over or by them. Pits will open in the same manner." It's a great rule to follow as a referee; you casually roll the die as the PCs are walking; I recommend only rolling once so the flurry of die rolls don't give the game away. Since I casually roll dice frequently in my games it's not noteworthy. And then a session later, the passage that the characters had passed without incident now opens up and someone falls into a pit. It's a great twist, and helps reinforce the idea that the dungeon doesn't become safe with time. Curiously this works much better with the later damage traps than with the get-lost type of traps that OD&D had foregrounded.

I'll finish with this. Traps are a spice in the dungeon, and it's definitely possible to go too far with them. I think putting in a trap in 1/6 rooms (the rate you find in Moldvay's rules for dungeon stocking) is a bit much - also that I don't think many traps should be in rooms proper as opposed to corridors. But a dungeon without them is just bland.

As for tricks, I'll be doing a follow-up focusing on them.