Fiend Folio: Rahu-Men for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

Rahu-men are gigantic, four-armed warriors from another plane. They are merciless marauders who wander the country-side.

Rahu-Man
Large giant, chaotic evil
________________________________________________

Armor Class 14 (chain)
Hit Points 68 (8d10 + 24) 

Speed 40 ft.
__________________________________________

   Str        Dex         Con           Int         Wis        Cha
19 (+4)    12 (+1)   17 (+3)    11 (+0)    10 (+0)     10 (+0)

__________________________________________


Skills Intimidation +3

Senses Darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10

Languages Common, giant
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

__________________________________________

Four Arms. Rahu-Men have advantage on Strength checks.

__________________________________________

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The rahu-man makes three attacks.

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (1d10+ 4) slashing damage.

Javelin. Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 10/120 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (2d4 + 1) piercing damage.

If you like this post and others like it and have an extra $1 a month, please consider becoming a Patron of Cross Planes at Patreon.

Back This: Champions Now

Champions 4th Edition, the Big Blue Book, is what brought me into gaming. Our group played it tirelessly and when 5E was published we came back to it in a big way(though these days I'd probably go back to 4E).

Hero Games and Ron Edwards (yes, the man behind the Forge, Sorcerer, and Trollbabe) are remixing Champions using 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition as the foundation. 

I'm intrigued. Those editions were published before Champions morphed into the HERO System.

You can freely check out the playtest PDF here.

And you may back the project here.

GameStorming: Rifts

I started playing Champions 4E and quickly found out I had gaming ADD. But I had help. I came across one of Palladium's old Magic of Palladium Books and their in-house hype machine made me want to buy EVERYTHING they had published sight unseen.

Of course, I bought Heroes Unlimited first, but no one wanted to go from Champions point buy character creation to HU's class-driven, DM-driven, sort of rules.

Then I bought Rifts and I fell hard. But once again, I wasn't experienced enough to understand that many early games left certain rules up to the DM, maybe they were incomplete or maybe they just empowered the DM. But, overall, the rules are...rough.

Savage Rifts is a great game, but sometimes you just can't shake your first big crush, y'know?

Obviously, I've been thinking about Rifts. I've been thinking about using it's system with a couple of house rules (only use Skill categories and the base percentage chance to succeed is set by the DM and your bonus in a skill modifies it, e.g. If I have Communication at +15% and the difficulty is 40%, then I have a 55% chance to succeed).

But I've also been looking at Genesys to run it. It could work.

But I've also though about using the Shadow of the Demon Lord rules to power it. It seems pretty sexy.

But I've also just thought about running any game system I like in the Rifts setting.  Yeah, for some reason that seemed to blow my mind. Like somehow I never really thought about that. Maybe take a DnD 5E game and Glitter Boy armor is a magic item or you gain some spell-like abilities to become a Burster or leylines affect spells.

Nothing concrete will happen soon. We have a boss fight with Vecna in the game I'm running this week and I'm purely playing in the friday game right now. But the ideas sit there, like an obsessed spider using my brain as it's web.

Mourning

Back in 1991, I began playing first Battletech and then Champions 4E with a group through my oldest friend Barry. Within months, even though I was a sophomore in college, my weekends were spent entirely with Barry, Mark M., Richard, Todd, Mike, Jonathan, Bob, and Aarron (the lack of girls there was not a conscious choice, we simply couldn't find any ladies willing to join us).

Yesterday, after a long battle witch cancer, Aarron passed. He left behind an amazing wife and son and a lot of memories.

He would have been 47 in November. I'll be 46 in September. He was way too young.

In the last several years, we'd grown apart because of living about an hour away from each other and he raising his family and me raising mine. There was no malice or falling out, just life. I always intended to get our families together and simply thought we had plenty of time. I was wrong, as we always are when we think such thoughts.

I'm not going to let nostalgia color that first gaming group because we all had a fair share of problems and conflicts and we probably spent nearly as much time arguing about rules at the table as playing, but a small part of me would wonder about getting the band back together for a weekend.

Sadly, that can't happen now.

Aaaron was an amazing person. Even at a young age he knew who he was and wasn't afraid to be that person. He was strong of opinion and loved to debate, but did so with logic and not emotion. He was a loyal and true friend. And I will miss him terribly and my heart breaks for his wife and young son.

Some things that I remember about him:

He only got two haircuts a year to save money.

He gave us a pick and a shovel for a house-warming gift.

We my son was a small, he's now 17, and I would say "we are going out to run errands", he would hear that we were going to Aarron's and weep when we did not.

I love and miss you Aarron and will be praying for your family.

Esoteric Enterprises: Sonny

I picked up a new game today, Esoteric Enterprises Player's Handbook by Dying Stylishly Game and Emmy Allen.

Imagine of all your regular character types, magic items, and monsters in a dungeon, but instead it's the modern world and we're the dirty little underground no one wants to acknowledge or deal with. For me it's a love child between B/X DnD, Unknown Armies, and Buffy.

The rules are based on Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

I'm going to make a 3rd Level Spook, a Sasquatch named Sonny to test things out:

ABILITY SCORES

Strength 16 (+2)

Dexterity 10

Constitution 13 (+1)

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 13 (+1)

Charisma 7 (-1)

Grit 7 (think Stamina in D20 games)

Flesh 8 (think Hit Points, when Grit goes to 0, then you take Flesh)

SAVES

Stunning 13

Poison 12

Hazards 15

Machines 13

Magic 15

SKILLS

Athletics 3 in 6

Perception 2 in 6

Vandalism 3 in 6

MONSTROUS POWERS

Darkvision

Memory Worm

No Reflection

GameStorming: Disney and Dragons

I spent the last week on vacation at Disney World with all of my family (except my oldest daughter who had to work). When you have a 1,000 mile drive each way, you end up with some time to brainstorm.

It led me to ponder certain Disney characters as Gods in DnD:

Chernobog (CE)
God of undead, necromancy, and secrets 

   Domain Death, Knowledge 

Maleficent (LE)
God of dragons, night, hatred 

   Domain Death

Rafiki (N)
God of nature 

   Domain Life, Nature 

Scar (CE)
God of shadows and lies 

   Domain Trickery 

The Sorcerer (As in Mickey's Boss in the Sorcerer's Apprentice) (CN)
God of magic

   Domain Arcana 

Ursula (NE)
God of the sea 

   Domain Tempest 

Genesys: Natalie Elias

I'd be resisting Fantasy Flight Games' Genesys system because it used "weird dice". I'm not opposed to new tech in RPGs, but I have a lot of dice and I like them. But after seeing some good reviews of the system from some people I trust in the blogosphere, I couldn't help picking it up.

I'm happy I did.

A few years back, I ran a one-shot of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire from the Starter Box and it went well. Very well. I just found the actual rulebook...intimidating. It seemed like more rules than I wanted and the writing, to me, was stiff.

Genesys doesn't feel that way though. The rules are a breeze to read through and the symbols this game uses, again somehow, stick in my brain easier.

I don't honestly know if I'll get much chance to run it, as DnD 5E and to a lesser extent Shadow of the Demon Lord are popular at my tables. But Genesys, thus far, is a bit more my cup of tea than Savage Worlds (it has Hit Points) or FAE and I'd love to run Numenera with the rules (I didn't find the Cypher System very well tooled to action at the table).

So here is character I'm making to test out the process, it ended up taking about 30 minutes.

NATALIE ELIAS

Archetype: Normal Human
Career: Scoundrel

ABILITIES
Brawn 2
Agility 3
Intellect 3
Cunning 2
Willpower 2
Presence 2

DERIVED ATTRIBUTES
Wound Threshold 14
Strain Threshold 12
Ranged Defense 0
Melee Defense 0
Soak Value 2

Ready for Anything

MOTIVATION
Desire Vengeance against Boss Nash
Fear Commitment
Strength Witty
Flaw Recklessness


SKILLS (Those in italics are Career Skills)
Computers 1
Cool 1
Driving 1
Melee 1
Perception 1
Ranged 2
Stealth 1
Streetwise 2

TALENTS
Clever Retort
Toughened

GEAR
Heavy Pistol
Damage 6; Crit 3; Range Medium

Natalie is a PI who has recently gotten out of prison for breaking and entering. While she is no angel, she was set up by Boss Nash, her uncle and the man responsible for her father's murder.