Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
My return to 1st Edition AD&D (“1e“) is now two years strong, and now I’ve added a 4th Edition D&D (“4e“) game to my schedule. So, it was a nice surprise for my friend, Mike, to let me know that he was offloading his old school D&D material. Before you get too excited, he’s giving these materials only to people he knows well because we’re getting them on the honor system. The only cost is to make a (tax deductible) donation to a cat or dog charity that represents the approximate cost to buy them in the store or on eBay. Considering I’m going to get a cat in early April, that’s an easy ask of me.
So, what did I get? First up, the box sets and hard-covers.
Menzoberranzan box set, Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn box set, Greyhawk Adventures, Dragon Lance Adventures, the Scarlet Brotherhood, a reprint of the Second Edition Player’s Handbook, Oriental Adventures, and Dragon #56
In general, I never owned any of these in the day, and I bought the PDF of Oriental Adventures from the DMs Guild during my recent rebuy because the hard cover wasn’t on sale. I’m glad I now have a hard cover without paying through the nose for it. I’ve been intrigued by Star Frontiers based on the relatively recent chatter it’s generated — the less I say about that chatter, the better — so I picked it up out of curiosity. As for Dragon #56, I told Mike I wasn’t interested in any of the magazines except perhaps the one that has the 1e bard in it, redone as a character you can play at 1st level. Sure enough, he had that issue. Score!
Next up, some soft covers.
I was planning to buy the Book of Lairs and Book of Lairs II, so that makes this supplement all the sweeter. I never owned any of these materials either. Now for the minis.
Yeah, that’s quite the haul, ain’t it. Of particular interest . . .
I never owned this guy. In fact, I never knew it existed, and I was quite the mini collector during the 3rd Edition D&D and 4e days. Somehow this one escaped me. Right now, the cheapest I see it on sale is $20 + about $6 shipping, so this one will set me back a bit.
These are just a few of the minis that I’ve never owned.
These are a few of the minis that I own but could always use more of. My players may not appreciate multiple Balors on the field of battle, but them’s the breaks.
One of my Living Forgotten Realms characters had a giant owl, so I was a bit disturbed when the stand for that mini broke. No amount of crazy glue could fix it. Now, I’ve replaced it. I think I took the second one out of some sort of cosmic spite.
Importantly, I have every intention of using these goodies in my 1e and 4e games, so this is quite the haul.
Some animal shelter is going to be very happy very soon.
A while back, I told you I was preparing for a return to 1st Edition AD&D, and to do so, I had to update my stash of 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“1e“) materials. Fast forward a couple of years. I’ve been running a 1e game for the first time in 40 years, and the only addition I had to make to my stash was the Egg of the Phoenix. Now, I’m less than 24 hours away from hosting a 4th Edition (“4e“) game (alternating DM duties with Luddite Vic), finally finishing my unfinished business, but I already have all the 4e stuff I could even need.
On a related note . . . .
Even though I can no longer stand 3rd Edition (“3e“), there were some books that were fantastic that I wish I had never sold. Serpentine Owl, who’ll be playing in the upcoming 4e game, gave me the reprint of Deities & Demigods (in perfect condition with the 3.5e conversion in the back); Erik (who left Twitter/X) gave me Hordes of the Abyss and Tyrants of the Nine Hells (both also in perfect condition); and then Jason (on Twitter/X but doesn’t appear to use it) gave me the Book of Vile Darkness (in pretty good condition). If I had gone through eBay, I would have paid almost as much for those four books as I did for all the 1e reprints I bought combined, but I got them all free.
If you click through the Book of Vile Darkness link, you won’t be able to view it without logging in and removing filters for adult content.
<gears turning>
So, after mulling it over, I realized, “The universe has provided so much in this regard, I think I can justify doing something stupid, especially something that isn’t too stupid.” I went to eBay and purchased the mediocre-at-best Book of Exalted Deeds just to have a match to the Book of Vile Darkness. I don’t know if I’ll ever use the material, but it’s nice to have that matched set, and I didn’t have to pay anywhere near USD$100 to get it. Now, I think my stash is complete, but who knows what I’ll be writing in a year?
My buddy, Vic, and I are getting ready to share dungeon master responsibilities on a new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e”) campaign set in a game world of our own creation. The subject of my Dungeon Crawl System (“DCS”) came up, and it had me thinking about a change I should have made to it back when people were playing 4een masse.
For context, the DCS is a method of 4e encounter design that speeds up 4e’s notoriously slow combats and eliminates the need for the so-called “15-minute adventuring day.” The PDF can be found here.
There are two things you need to know to understand the change. First, in the DCS, NPCs were granted a +10 environment bonus to initiative assuring they’d almost always go first, and when they didn’t, the result would feel remarkably satisfying for the players. Second, there was a flaw in 4e’s math that didn’t manifest for most games because epic-level play was relatively rare. NPCs didn’t keep pace with PCs, such that by the time you reached epic level, the PCs were walking through NPCs as if they weren’t even there.
This, of course, assumes that you built your epic encounters as instructed. Sly Flourish provided some excellent (and free) advice on how to design your encounters so that they could keep pace with the PCs’ power curve. The short answer was cheat. Pull out all sorts of terrain, traps, and other tricks. “Gone are the days where monsters out of the book could threaten PCs.” If you’re completely unfair, the end result will be a reasonable challenge for the PCs. The long answer provides far more precise science than that.
The fact that the NPCs couldn’t keep pace with the PCs detracted from the game as written, but it fit nicely with my DCS. To put a point on it, epic level 4e as written in the sourcebooks was the DCS. Build encounters as written, don’t allow short rests more often than every other encounter, and epic level was fast and furious and reasonably balanced.
The Change
Put another way, as the PCs approach epic level, there’s less of a need for the DCS. 4e itself slowly morphs into the DCS, so the DCS needs to slowly eliminate itself. There was one easy way to do that requiring an insignificant conceptual leap.
For the NPCs’ environment bonus to initiative, the bonus shouldn’t be a flat +10. Instead, use this formula: ((30-[PC level])/3)+1 always rounding down. In Excel, use column A to list the levels from 1 to 30, then populate column B with =MAXA((ROUNDDOWN((30-A#)/3,0)+1),0), where A# is a placeholder for cells A1, A2, A3, etc. In English, it’s this: For levels 1-3, the bonus is +10; levels 4-6, it’s +9; 7-0, it’s +8; etc. Each set of three continuous levels has the same bonus, and it’s one less than the previous (i.e., lower) set of three levels. For those who work best with charts, it’s this:
Level
Bonus
1-3
+10
4-6
+9
7-9
+8
10-12
+7
13-15
+6
16-18
+5
19-21
+4
22-24
+3
25-27
+2
28-30
+1
This creates enough of an improvement that no further tweaks are strictly necessary. So, as for the rest of the numbers, until you hear otherwise, use my system as written for levels 1-20, but when you hit 21st level, build encounters the way the Dungeon Master’s Guide instructs you. That’s probably precise enough because, if you’ve bought in to running the game, you’re already committed to the notion that you’re bound to tweak your encounters anyway. My system’s precision is close enough for dungeon master work, even at high paragon and epic.
I will definitely be using this system quite a bit when I running this campaign.
My buddy, Vic, and I are starting a new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e”) campaign for which we’ll be alternating as dungeon masters. The campaign will be set in a game world of our own creation called Baledaar (BA-leh-dar). I spent all weekend entering the cosmology into Masterplan. Doing so required that I fill in some (not all) of the gaps in our, well, master plan for the campaign setting. I’m really happy about where were taking this.
We created several Twitter/X handles for many of the deities and locations of the campaign world. To keep them active, I posted some goofy, soap opera-like back and forth, but going forward, a lot of the tweets/exes(?) will represent updates for the progress, as well as some in-character interaction that isn’t necessarily as goofy. The idea will be to give people a feel for the setting elements in case we ever publish it.
In light of the direction in which Elon is going, I’ll probably create a few of these on Mastodon as well.
As promised yesterday, here’s a funny story from my only other Origins trip in 2009.
Something I didn’t mention in the video: I remember clearly that the swag I received for working the convention included the newly released Eberron Player’s Guide for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. It wasn’t a complete stretch to think that Keith would have been there, but sitting down at a Living Forgotten Realms table to play an ordinary game was a bit of a stretch.
I saw Keith Baker hanging out with Luke Gygax at a bar at Origins last weekend, but I wasn’t going to interrupt them with this story about a guy he didn’t know (Steve) being told by another guy (me) he didn’t know for an incident in which he played no part.
So, here’s a shitty memory. I had a rough childhood. I won’t go into detail except as relevant to this post, which is relatively tame, but still kind of sucks in a way that gaming nerds will relate.
As a victim of the Satanic Panic, I was forbidden from playing D&D in 1982. Two years later, as a high school sophomore, my cousin introduced me to Barbarian books store in Wheaton, MD (now Barbarian Comics). This is where he bought his comic books. That didn’t interest me at all, but the store also sold RPG material. I knew not to buy D&D materials, but as a high school student, I rebelled a bit and bought FASA Star Trek material. Needless to say, I kept it secret for as long as I could, because that’s still “the same thing” as far as my family was concerned.
I bought the 1st edition box set, the 2nd edition box set, numerous adventures, and a bunch accessories. The accessories included starship models that could be used with that game. Each cost $4.00 (plus tax), so if I bought fifteen of them, that was probably about two weeks pay. Considering I was forced to pay for private high school and college, that’s a fortune, but I can assure you I bought far more than 15 of them. I continued to buy material all the way until the first couple years of college. When my family eventually found my hidden materials, they were largely destroyed. I managed to hide most of my written material, but the starship models were a total loss, and a few accessories disappeared. For a high school/college student in the mid- to late-80s, these were expensive. They were all destroyed by my older brother, who enjoyed enforcing my mother’s prohibition against, well, virtually anything that made me happy, gaming or otherwise.
A couple of years ago, I replenished my entire catalogue of 1st Edition D&D (“1e“) material. There’s nothing I ever owned, or even ever wanted, that I don’t now own. I spent somewhere between $300 and $400, but that bought me more material than I could ever hope to run in the 21 years I statistically have left on this planet. I’m fortunate enough that I afford that. However, take a look at this bullshit. If you didn’t click through (or you’re reading this years after the eBay listing was removed), this is one of those $4.00 models that is selling for $40.00 plus $4.20 shipping. Here’s a screenshot for posterity.
This is an obscure, seldom used starship.
Imagine buying merely fifteen of these now. I’m not a math major, but that should be $633.00 just for materials that aren’t strictly necessary for the game. Buying them at these prices can’t be justified unless you’re truly wealthy.
I’m now running a 1e game for the first time in 40 years, so I’m in no position to complain. However, I’d really love to play FASA Star Trek again. Unfortunately, I know of only two local people that are interested in a in-person game, and one of them isn’t what I’d call “reliable.” (Note: I hate online gaming.) In short, there’s no chance of an in-person game, and certainly none in which I’m a player. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but I can live with that. I’m fortunate to be playing 1e. Moreover, I’m working on starting a 4th Edition D&D game, which also appeals to me. I have plenty going on, and will probably have more than I can handle soon enough.
But as an American, I’m spoiled and want more.
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One of my favorite villains is fantasy roleplaying is Medusa. In Dungeons & Dragons (“D&D”), that’s a species of creature. In Greek mythology, that’s the name of one of three of her kind, known as Gorgons. Most of you know this, but for those that don’t, here’s one of many videos on them. While I respect the work game designers do, I’m always going to prefer mythological creatures to those game designers invent. Mythology got me into D&D, not the other way around.
3.5 EditionD&D
I love the way D&D has treated medusae generally. I vaguely remember an article in Dragon Magazine during the 3.5 EditionD&D (“3.5e”) days with a writeup on their ecology, which included their male counterparts, the maedar. I never got to use that article because it came towards the end of 3.5e, and I was so caught up in running Living Forgotten Realms and other canned adventures that I didn’t write much of my own material. I always wanted to write a medusa as a BBEG.
4th Edition D&D
In 4th Edition D&D (“4e”), I loved how 4e’s game mechanic was applied to the medusa’s petrifying gaze attack. In 4e, save or die was jettisoned and replaced by what you could call “save thrice in a row or die.” That is, you got three saves over three turns before you were killed, dominated, or whatever. If you saved successfully once during that run, you shook off the effects (though relatively rarely, you still might be subject to an aftereffect on a successful save). This worked really well with the medusa because each failed save during that three-round process resulted in increasingly bad effects. That is, on the first failed save, you were slowed (i.e., speed cut in half). On the second, you were immobilized (i.e., speed of 0). On the third failed save, you were petrified. This gives the player a means to immerse oneself in the action, as the cascade of worsening effects can give you the feeling of slowly turning to stone. (FYI, medusae weren’t the only creature to use this cascade.)
1st Edition D&D
I’m running 1st Edition D&D (“1e”) for the first time in 40 years, so I had forgotten quite a bit. There are a couple of things about medusae that I relearned. First, their gaze attack targets a single creature, whereas in later editions it attacks multiple targets. Second, the gaze is active, not passive. That is, a character merely gazing upon a medusa doesn’t harm the character; the medusa has to intend to petrify the opponent. (See Monster Manual II, page 55 for more information.) While these represent a break from mythology, as you’ll see, they worked to my advantage. One other thing to note is that I house ruled petrification to use the 4e system of slow progression to being petrified.
B2: The Keep on the Borderlands
Going into last session, my group and I knew that we had reached the end of the adventure. So, I told them that I’d be railroading them a little bit to make sure we wrapped things up and that a particular encounter occurred. That encounter was with spoiler alert! a medusa – I named her Xisper – who was captured by inhabitants of the Caves of Chaos and chained to a wall. She used her gaze attack against one PC, but he saved successfully. Some of the PCs held true to their good alignment and refused to allow anyone to kill her but indicated that they’d leave her to her fate, so Xisper immediately went into negotiation mode. Long story short, that negotiation led to them freeing her to clear out the gnoll infestation (the one area the PCs never addressed) and gave me the perfect recurring NPC to bring back at a later date. She’s undoubtably evil, but alignment in my game world is always more complicated than the books present, so she could still be of use to them, and them to her. This is even better than a BBEG.
Xisper will return.
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Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
A few weeks ago, I hosted another 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“1e”) game at my home. The group spent over an hour at the start of the session just reminiscing about the good old days when most of us first met. This was during the era of 4th Edition. Inevitably, the subject of synDCon came up. synDCon was the gaming convention financed primarily by Vic and me. The two of us did almost all the work of running the convention once it began. It was large enough that we had everything represented (see below), yet still maintained the coziness of conventions like Winter Fantasy.
synDCon Was Awesome
I need to put my modesty aside for a bit and say that we pulled off something magical (pun absolutely intended). In our first year, we took advantage of a holiday and put on a four-day convention. We provided tons of organized play: Living Forgotten Realms (4e), Pathfinder Society, and Heroes of Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings). We also had individual games from less popular RPGs being run here and there, tons of card games (including, of course, Magic the Gathering), tons of board games, and we were the official DC-area convention for Munchkin. We had special events, a LARP, dungeon delves I wrote based on classic 1e adventures, and live music on Saturday night for one of the cons. Our slots were staggered so that slots didn’t start every four hours but rather every two hours. If you wanted to sleep in a bit, you could. You’d just start playing at 11 am instead of 9 am, but there were enough 2-hour slots of other things to do that you could still get three slots of gaming in.
It wasn’t run in a convention center, nor in the basement of a mediocre hotel, but rather in a really nice “hotel and executive meeting center” right across the street from a Metro (subway) stop in Rockville, Maryland. As the county seat for Montgomery County, there were tons of restaurants, et al. in the area, including a gaming store down the street. Of course, we had a gaming store as our in-convention vendor both years, and we generated about 200 attendees both years. Our attendees represented everywhere in the United States east of the Mississippi (e.g., Florida, Georgia, and Ohio), but we gave an award to a guy named Matt for having come the farthest for the con (Alaska).
We had tremendous support from volunteers that helped organize the detail while Vic and I focused on the big picture, and we’re forever indebted to those friends, but I’ll be damned if my feet weren’t atrociously sore by the end of both cons.
Seriously, it was stupendous, and everyone that attended and commented on it said so.
A Slight Diversion Before My Point
I’ve been thinking of doing something other than a Vegas blackjack trip for my fall vacation – I say this every year, so we’ll see if I follow through – and was considering an RPG gaming convention instead. Because I wanted to play 1e, I was initially thinking about GaryCon, but a friend pushed me towards GameholeCon. It was an easy sell because the timing would be better. GaryCon would interfere with Winter Fantasy, but GameholeCon would slide right into the Vegas slot (again, pun absolutely intended). The trouble is that Winter Fantasy and synDCon have spoiled me. I have no intention of going to a convention and paying between $100 and $200 per night for my hotel room if I’m staying at least 2 miles from the convention. That’s ridiculous. It’s like GenCon on a smaller scale. The city is obviously not big enough to handle the convention. So, I decided to look into other options.
There Aren’t Any
Sadly, I went through all my options I could find online, and nothing quite matches the magic of Winter Fantasy or synDCon as far as I can tell. The lists were not complete – Winter Fantasy wasn’t even mentioned (?!) – so maybe there are some other cons out there, but I can’t find them. The cons are at least one of the following: in an inconvenient or excessively crowded location, lack inexpensive parking, or focused on only a few things (usually the shiny new things of the day). Some are also not “cozy,” which I define as between 200 and 350 people. It’s large enough that there can be plenty to do, and you can meet new people, but small enough that you’ll always be able to find your friends and hang out with them. Winter Fantasy doesn’t even satisfy all of these characteristics perfectly – I tried to run 1e but only one ticket for only one slot of three was sold – but it’s as close to perfect as I think practical for a cozy con. It’s also in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I’m fine going out there, and I will every year they’ll have me, but I find it odd that an area with as big a gaming community as DC doesn’t have something like this.
And this is my point. DC needs a convention like synDCon or Winter Fantasy. Such a con isn’t going to hit the radar scope of the big players (i.e., Wizards of the Coast and Paizo), but it’ll appeal to plenty of players. The DC area is filled with them. Our Gamers’ Syndicate gaming club had over 200 people that identified as members, and we ran game days every single weekend in as many as five gaming stores at a time. While organizing synDCon, I learned of several other groups just as large that had never even heard of us. They were organizing at other stores. This area has an abundance of gamers, and I suspect there are even more here over 10 years later.
Will There Be a synDCon III?
That’s the magic question. I’m happy to organize it, but as we discussed at the game session, my demands are high. First off, I want to do it right or not do it at all. I’m not willing to put together a con in “the basement of the Best Western.” No offense to the chain in general, but that happens to be a hotel we visited that would be the site of a con not worth having. It was downright gross but not unlike venues of cons I’ve attended in the early 2000s. No thanks. Second, having learned from my experiences with the first two, the only way I’d do it is if I had a number of additional owners willing to slap down cashier’s checks for at least $2,000 each (or more depending on how many people commit) and having signed an operating agreement that prevents them from every cashing out that initial investment. That is, I need a sizeable stable of people willing to commit whole-heartedly so that I know I’ll have both the funds and the work ethic necessary to make this doable. Trust me when I say that it’s not enough that someone throw money at me. I need to know that they’re committed to doing the work necessary to pull off a great con. Because it’s been over 10 years, I don’t know what the minimum acceptable number of owners would be, especially without knowing exactly how much each would be willing to contribute up front, but I do know $2,000 is enough to motivate most gamers to stay the course and do what they could not to throw that money away. Any of them willing to drop $2,000 are likely to take it seriously.
Another thing I remember is that no one wanted to be the guy, the “convention coordinator” or CEO who had to make the calls when weird situations arose. While I’m happy to be that guy, I’m not willing to be the one that puts out the feelers (beyond this post, I guess) and see if there’s interest. If I thought my odds were better than 50% of finding such interest, I would, but I don’t think there are enough people willing to make this kind of commitment, so why bother trying? I did my part for king and country, and wound up with a small, overworked group. If this is meant to be, then someone else will have to get the ball rolling. So, while I’m not the one destined to put this together, I strongly suspect there’s a market for it, and my recent thoughts and conversations on the matter sure leave me wishing someone would.
If that’s you, drop me an email when you think you’ve got something real.
Sundays are now lazy days for me. I post either someone else’s work, or something silly. Usually both. Today is a meme created by Alex Tate over on the Facebook group, Tiamat’s Tavern. Alex granted me permission to reproduce it here.
The thing is, I’m with Jesse on this one. I get the need for dungeon fodder, but there are a lot of options for that. Besides, simply denying PCs the opportunity to flank a low-level NPC isn’t particularly overpowered if you find other ways to adjust the NPC to maintain balance. So, I have no problem with adding a bit of realism to my game even if not required from a gaming perspective. In fact, I prefer it.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
I recently discovered Masterplan by Andy Aiken, which is campaign planning, management, and execution software for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e”). You can download it here. Just click on setup.msi and follow the prompts. If you’re not a 4e player, he’s created a similar online only tool for 5th Edition, Dojo, here. But enough about that. This post is about 4e. 🙂
This tool is fantastic, but it’s 4e-based, so adapting it to my 1st Edition game would be too time consuming without much benefit over what I’m doing now. Because I’ll be a player in my upcoming 4e campaign for the foreseeable future, my first step was to create libraries for my my synDCon Dungeon Delves(referred to as “synDClash” for the convention), my divine stat blocks (with corrections) for the Egyptian and Central American pantheons (which occasionally generate interest on my blog), and some other stat blocks I thought were pretty good.
I’ve finished every pre-existing element I planned to input into Masterplan except Monster Manual 3. That’s going to take a while. Because of WordPress restrictions, I can’t upload the library unless I change its extension to an allowed extension. So, for example, I’ve changed Central American Deities.library to Central American Deities.pdf. Likewise, Giant Problems.masterplan was renamed Giant Problems.pdf. You can download everything I’ve done to date using the links below, but you’ll need to change the extension back to .library or .masterplan. Libraries must be placed in your Masterplan/Libraries directory on your hard drive, but projects can go anywhere that’s convenient for you. They aren’t loaded automatically when the software boots up, so the system doesn’t need them to be in a particular place. Adobe Acrobat/Reader can’t read these files, so you won’t be able to view the material until you change that extension and load them into Masterplan. I’ll add more libraries as I create them, so expect hyperlinks to be added to this list. Well, that’s my master plan anyway.
I want to point out a great feature that mimics what I’m doing in my 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons game with Roll20. You can run your maps and minis online. If your computer has two monitors, you can hide one from the players, but a “player’s view” appears on the other monitor. This obviates the need for a battle map on your table. This isn’t exactly Earth-shattering to a 2022 audience, but this was implemented over a decade before the COVID pandemic accelerated the need for tools of this nature. As such, this doesn’t facilitate remote play over the internet, but as someone who runs my games in person but places maps on a computer screen, this works really well. It’s better than using Roll20 because it’s all self-contained. I can do this on a single computer within a single software application. With Roll20, I have to bring up a second browser, switch to player view, then always bounce back and forth between the two to make sure what’s on my screen matches what’s on the players’ screen. This isn’t a huge burden, but it’s technically a little more difficult. Masterplan makes it trivial. Of course, you may prefer the battle map to either solution for a game like 4e. Players may want to move their own minis around the board, but from the DM’s perspective, moving multiple minis is a lot easier on the screen than on a battle map.
Bug/Defect Report and Wishlist
I’m just getting started with Masterplan, but with what little I’ve done, I’ve already encountered some consistent defects. First off, some of the issues aren’t defects. The system doesn’t properly calculate suggested attack expressions because those depend on how many targets a power targets, but you often enter things like “one or two creatures in the burst” manually, so there’s no way for the system to calculate the proper attack bonus. For the record, an attack against multiple targets’ ACs suffers a -2 penalty in relation to an attack against one creature’s AC (-1 if the monster is a controller). So, you just have to watch your attack expressions.
That said, initiative isn’t even close to correct. According to page 184 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (“DMG“), a soldier has an initiative bonus equal to its Dex bonus + 1/2 its level (rounded down) +2 because it’s a soldier. For Quetzacloatl, that’s 8 (27 Dex) + 17 (level 34) + 2 = 27, but Masterplan suggests 21. In some cases, Masterplan is off by as many as 9, but I haven’t yet figured out if there’s a pattern.
Defenses are also off. A soldier’s Fortitude should be 12 + level, which in the case of Quetzacoatl should be 12 + 34 = 46. This is exactly what Masterplan recommends. However, Masterplan doesn’t account for how ability scores change the default calculations. Specifically, each defense relies on the higher of two paired ability scores, which are Str and Con for Fortitude. The average ability score for a monster should be 13 + 1/2 level (rounding down), which is 30 at level 34. In the case of Quetzalcoatl, his Str is 36, and his Con is 30. So, take the higher of the two (Str 36), and compare that to the average (30). Accordingly, Quetzalcoatl has a Str 6 higher than average, so you should add half that (3) to his Fortitude, giving him a Fortitude of 46 + 3 = 49. As I said, Masterplan recommends 46, not 49.
I get that small differences in defenses may not matter too much, especially considering that one’s choice of ability scores is often based on flavor considerations or downright arbitrary. However, as the DMG suggests, sometimes you need to give monsters those bumps for game balance. Moreover, the pairing of ability scores facilitates making, for example, a low-intellect character whose Reflex defense can still be competitive due to a solid Dexterity score. Besides, for whatever reason, I’ve included the bumps, so I wish Masterplan factored in that aspect of the games’ rules.
Some of the math is solid. Hit points are good. Skill bonuses are good. Masterplan doesn’t provide damage expressions, so there’s nothing to check there. Also, I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet that performs all the correct calculations and helps me catch the errors, so where there are systemic issues, they’re easily corrected. If you find anything wrong with my calculations, please let me know, but I think I have it right for monsters. Just to make sure, I created and started populating the missing Monster Manual 3 library, started entering creatures, and found my Excel spreadsheet to match the WotC entries perfectly in most cases (exception: Silverback Ape), while the Masterplan recommendations still suffered from the same math errors. NPCs are treated a little differently than monsters (see DMG, page 186), so those aren’t relevant here.
Masterplan gives you the capability to copy an existing monster and paste it. That sounds like it makes things easier, but I find myself ignoring that feature. If the pasted stat block is of a different level or role (i.e., artillery, brute, etc.), when you adjust either, Masterplan will add miscellaneous bonuses to trained skill bonuses to keep them from changing. You’ll have to go through each one and delete the bonus. Moreover, you’ll inevitably have to change most of the attack expressions anyway, so why not do that from scratch? Still, there are some exceptions where it’s easier to make a copy, so YMMV.
To make a change to a part of stat block (e.g., a power), you open a dialog box, make your changes, then hit OK to save it. It returns you to the main stat block but jumps to the top. I’d rather the position of the view not change so that it returns me to where I need to be to continue making changes.
I’ve learned (far too late) that if you’re creating a monster, and you leave the “range” entry blank for a power, the next time you open the software and bring up the monster, whatever you entered in “power details” will be moved to range. To avoid this issue, I’ve started to enter “self,” “melee 1 (see below),” or something similar. You may find yourself having to modify my stat blocks accordingly. This isn’t a fatal flaw. It’s just a bit annoying to see “Range:” before the power details because they’ve been moved into the wrong field.
I’m not permitted to add a trap/hazard to an encounter map even if the trap/hazard has a stat block and is added to the encounter. I’d like to be able to add the trap, but then make it invisible on the “player view” screen.
Notice that the stat block for the sinkhole doesn’t appear in the list to the right of the map. Therefore, it can’t be added.
In the aura dialog box, the tab order for the keywords field is off.
But seriously, this software is amazing. These are nitpicks, and as long as we all help each other identify these problems, we can work with them even if the software is never patched.
Many stat blocks crash the system!!! I did a significant amount of testing, and here’s a strange error I discovered. If your monster (or one that comes with the system) has the word, “hobgoblin” in its name, and if the NPC isn’t of a certain level, the software crashes whether you’re creating the stat block or just trying to view it. A hobgoblin of 5th or 6th level seems to work, and bugbears and goblins aren’t affected. I initially got around the problem by calling my Hobgoblin Warcaster a “Hobo Warcaster” instead. The presence of “hobgoblin” within the powers doesn’t create the problem. I hope Andy has the time and desire to fix this, but I think he moved past this project a long time ago.
Also of note: If the system crashes, you lose all your work since you last opened the program. So, if you’ve made significant changes, exit the library, then exit the software so that it will properly save. You wouldn’t think this was necessary considering that the libraries are separate data files, but it is. Nothing is saved until you exit the program. I’ve lost a good bit of work after unwittingly attempting to open a corrupt stat block entry.
Below is the list of monsters that are confirmed to crash the system. You should expect this list to grow as I continued to plow through the program. I’m replacing them with renamed creatures I built from scratch. “Hobgoblin” is now “Hob Goblin,” “Mezzodemon” is now “Mezzo Demon,” “Nycademon” is now “Nyca Demon,” and “Wereboar” is now “Were Boar.” That seems to solve the problem no matter what else is in the name of the creature.
I also made changes to the Monster Manual 2 library. I added all the stat blocks that were missing (there were about a dozen IIRC), replaced the malfunctioning one listed above, and categorized all of them. What that last one means is that, for example, Blizzard dragons fall in the section labeled, “Dragon.” There’s a field for that in the database labeled “Category,” but it’s not an indicator of the type of creature. Keywords handle that. Category refers to the section in which the monster is found. Blizzard dragons are in the Dragon section, so Dragon should be its category. An elder brain is not a mind flayer, but it’s written up in the mind flayer section because it’s part of their culture. Thoon hulks are mind flayers, so they have the mind flayer keyword, but they also need to have the mind flayer category. If category is empty, the creature is placed in “Miscellaneous Creatures.” Most of the monsters were missing that piece of data, so I went through each stat block and added the category to the stat block. In other words, the creatures are now better organized and easier to navigate. That process didn’t change the underlying data (other than replacing malfunctioning stat blocks of course).
Complete Rework of the Libraries
I’m just now adding this section almost a week after initial publication of this post. I’m annoyed by the crashing stat blocks, but the other things that bugs me are 1) the “Miscellaneous Creatures” mentioned above; and 2) the fact that some of this data entry was performed before WotC changed how they write the stat blocks. For example, the range entry (e.g., “Melee 1 (one creature)”) didn’t exist until Monster Manual 3. Sometimes, this resulted in strangely expressed stat blocks (e.g., the Solamith from Manual of the Planes, page 123). So, I’m going through all of the libraries and cleaning up the old data. I wouldn’t have expected Andy to do that and am glad he didn’t. I’m glad he spent his time polishing the functionality. Leave data entry to the community (i.e., me). I’ll provide all of the libraries when I’m finished with them. In the meantime, here’s an updated Monster Manual 2 library (also posted above) placing all of the creatures into their appropriate “section,” replacing the corrupted stat blocks, and adding the missing stat blocks. I haven’t yet updated the stat blocks to the new format yet. I won’t do that until I’m finished with Monster Manual 3, though Manual of the Planes is finished, so download that one now. I’ve also provided updates to Draconomicon Metallic Dragons (I replaced the crashing draconian stat blocks) and Underdark (I properly categorized a few stat blocks), and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (I replaced crashing stat blocks, corrected errors, added missing monsters, and updated the terminology to the later format). Again, they have *.pdf extensions, which must be changed to a *.library extensions and placed in the libraries folder.
More Downloads
If you want to complete your 4e downloads with the offline Character Builder, then use one of these three videos for instructions.
I provided three videos because at least one of them didn’t work, and one of them I never tried. I’ve forgotten which is which. However, whatever I installed doesn’t include later material, and it appears there’s a newer version of the CBLoader here. This one may include the missing material, but I have no idea how well it works. Caveat emptor. (It’s free.)
Play What You Want 