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Showing posts from October, 2018

The Great Pumpkin

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Great Pumpkin Large Outsider (Extraplanar) Hit Dice: 12d8+36 (84 hp) Initiative: +1 Speed: 30’, fly 20’ (average) Armor Class: 18 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +8 natural); touch: 10, flat-footed: 17 Base Attack/Grapple: +12/+19 Attack: Claw +16 melee (1d6+5) or Tendril +12 ranged (1d6+2) Full Attack: 2 Claws +16 melee (1d6+8) and Bite +14 melee (1d8+2) or 2 Tendrils +12 ranged (1d6+2) Space/Reach: 10’/15’ Special Attacks: Constrict; Improved Grab; Fear Gaze Special Qualities: DR5/slashing; Fire Vulnerability; Flight; Low-Light Vision; Spell-like Abilities Saves: Fort +11, Ref +9. Will +10 Abilities: Str 20, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12 Skills: Heal +12, Hide +12*; Knowledge (Nature) +15; Knowledge (Religion) +15; Search +10; Survival +17 (+19 in aboveground, natural environments or when tracking) Feats: Combat Reflexes; Dodge; Multiattack; Mobility; Track Environment: House of Nature (G

A Political Campaign in the Kingdom of Ghouls

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Not so long ago, one of the player characters from my current campaign died of ghoul fever and rose from the dead.   Not wanting to waste such an interesting development, I started digging through old issues of Dungeon magazine for inspiration and came across an adventure called “Kingdom of Ghouls” in issue #70. The story, at least as written, involves the adventurers being called to provide aid to a group of subterranean communities that are besieged by the undead.   The party has to defeat a ghoul army and restore order.   But, since I have a PC who is a ghoul now, I started thinking about putting him in charge of the undead army and having him set out to conquer the region.   I made my changes and am just about ready to launch the adventure. And then, last night, as I was looking over my map of the area I started to wonder…What if the ghouls win?   In theory, they would have killed or driven off their potential food sources during their conquest.   There would be no

Day Four of the Odinsleep (The Svartalfar Beaten Back?)

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Day Four of the Odinsleep (Noon- 5pm) Korbin’s dream begins once more – Ginnugagap, the confluence of ice and fire, the creation of the Nine Realms, the rise of the gods and Thor’s death.  All remains the same until the duel atop the rainbow outside of the city.  This time, instead of Loki battlign the warrior, a hideous monstrosity stitched together from parts and pieces taken from the Einherjar, the Jotun, Svartalfar, and wyrms faces off against the fighter.  Loki’s would-be slayer is killed by the wretched abomination and Loki goes on to divert the arrival of the fire demons through illusions, lies and other beguilements.  As the demons withdraw, Loki takes the high seat in the gods’ mead hall for himself. - - - - - - - - - - Idunn glances toward the approaching Svartalfar out of the corner of her eye and makes a soft buzzing sound.  Three bees fly from the grove and land in her outstretched hand.  She murmurs softly while passing her hand over the insects and they fly toward

My Kids' Campaign

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A few summers back, I decided to run a very simple campaign for my children.   They had been obsessed with my copy of d20 BESM for months and wanted desperately to make characters of their own.   I said cool and sat down with them, helped pick out their classes and skills and everything else and the end results were a party of pre-teen adventurers based in the city of Eveningstar in the Kingdom of Cormyr.   They were: Alyssa Jewel – a human female Shapechanger.   Her ability to change form was limited to cosmetic modifications only, about half of the effect you would get out of a Change Self spell.   By the end of the second adventure, she has also capable of minor elongation.   Jackie Woo – a human Ninja.   His mother had emigrated from Kara-Tur while he was still very young and found work as a washer-woman in a house of one of the kingdom’s more affluent families.   He had prodigious leaping abilities and carried flashbombs that he was supposed use to blind foes so he co

US Archer

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Man, looking back, the 80s were frickin’ weird.   Ignore for a moment Glam Rock, Parachute Pants, New Coke, and Flock of Seagulls haircuts and think about the how the Decade of Excess gave birth to some of the most iconic and enduring pop culture icons of all time: Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man, Thundercats, and the list goes on and on. The character I’m going to talk about today is not on that list. Anywhere. And for good reason. Ulysses Solomon Archer was the product of a merchandising tie-in between Tyco Toys and Marvel Comics.   The series lasted for 12 issues before being cancelled and while the character himself has cropped up a handful of times, most notably with She-Hulk, a team-up Deadpool, and when he applied for a job as the nanny to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’s daughter, he is one of those characters that … well, could have only existed in the 80s. But, like Turbo Teen , Condiment King , Perry the Platypus , and Man-