If you missed the Revised 4E Wizard Class, then you might want to go take a look.

The next revision will probably be the Rogue (and after that the Cleric), however, before the Revised 4E Rogue Class I would like to get the Vampire Bestiary on sale. So it may be a week or so before I get the Rogue finished and uploaded. 

Changes

So a number of things have changed in this version.

1. Based on the feedback quite a few of the martial maneouvers have had their modifier changed.
2. I have added combos to the mix.
3. I split the Fighter up into different builds.
4. I added some new stances and maneouvers
5. Implemented all conditions as lasting until the end of next turn (with certain exceptions like knocked prone, ongoing damage and unconsciousness).
6. Added some wuxia style ‘extraordinary attacks’ for the epic tier.
7. I changed some of the table formatting to look a bit neater.

Anyway, here is the Revised 4E Fighter v2.0, Let me know what you think.

Quite a few people seemed to like that, so here is my attempt at revising the 4th Edition Wizard class using the same basic methods. I think its pretty good for a first attempt but I am sure it could be tweaked and balanced in a few areas.

Let me know what you think…and yes I do plan on similar treatments of (at least) both the Rogue class and the Cleric class, as well as a second crack at a revised Fighter class. I’ll try to get those here on the website at a rate of maybe one for every 4-5 days as time allows.

So without further ado…enjoy…and forget Elminster, Ringlerun RULES!

Personally I think 4E is a great system, very robust, balanced and near perfect for combat. Designing monsters has never been more fun. But all that said, it does have a number of flaws:

• Rules Bloat: I think in particular the individual classes REALLY take up far too much space. I do however, think I have solved this problem below.
• Lack of Identity for the higher Tiers: The higher tiers are just more of the same with more math, when they needed to add elements like mass combat, running a stronghold, gigantic monsters, politics, running a country, becoming a religion/immortal. I go into more details on this in The Ten Commandments of Epic article.
• The Game System License: Slightly improved now, but the initial GSL for 4E really isolated the third party companies and caused the schism that is Pathfinder.
• Too Combat Centric: Don’t get me wrong, I love RPG combat/tactical play and 4E is the best system for that. But after reading Revenge of the Iron Lich it was clear that other 4E products (adventures in particular) really ignored the exploration and puzzle side of the game.
• Underwhelming Products: While 4E had its share of gems (Dungeon Delves, Open Grave, Draconomicon, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting among others) too many of the books were all too familiar and pretty lacklustre efforts. I can’t remember the last time I really got excited by a 4E release.

The Rules Bloat

This problem is particularly important because it works against any expansion of the game (in particular any 4E Immortal Tier expansion). In 4th Edition, the Fighter class entry takes up about 14 pages (1 page of illustration & fluff text, 10 pages of Powers and Utilities, 3 pages devoted to Paragon Paths). Note that this doesn’t even count feats or Epic Destinies. So you are probably talking about 16 pages of material for each and every class…and remember that each of the main classes was also expanded with more powers and utilities, more feats and more Paragon Paths in multiple books. Its too much to remember, it really is.

4E ‘Lite’: The Fighter Class

So I don’t know what direction 5E will take, but here is an idea for how to represent all of a classes powers within about a half a page of text. The benefits of this approach are in my opinion MASSIVE:

• Flexibility: Gives people the ability to create (and name) their own powers.
• Simplicity: Less text means its MUCH less daunting for casual gamers.
• Space Saving: Detailing all of a classes powers in less than a page. You could even, easily now  fit ALL the powers for the entire class on a character sheet.
• Variety: Retains ALL the variety of the 4E powers…in fact if anything it expands the number of powers.
• Expansion: Makes expanding classes simple…all you do is add a new power modifier. Thats ONE line of text.
• Transparency: Shows how the system works allowing DMs and gamers to experiment for themselves.
• Multi-classing: By making multi-classing in itself a power modifier you do away with the need for multi-classing feats.
• Eradicates Repetition: Going over the Fighter powers in 4E and you’d be amazed how many times almost identical powers are repeated…and remember that each new power is about another 10 lines of text.

Anyway without further ado, here is the idea.

In the meantime, I thought I would bring your attention to the Wrath of the Immortals movie thats released in March. The trailer is out now and we can see a number of interesting creatures.

1. Minotaur (I think)
2. Chimera
3. Hekatonkeres (I’m guessing thats what it is even though it only has 6 arms, I still like the design, very cool)
4. Kronos
5. Cyclops (not on the poster above, but in the trailer we see it dual wielding clubs ‘Ettin-stylee’)

Mini Review: Clash of the Titans (the 2010 movie)

As coincidence would have it I got the dvd of the recent Clash of the Titans remake for Christmas. I had of course already seen the movie in the cinema…in fact I also saw the original Clash of the Titans movie in the cinema when I was very young…it probably made a lasting impression on me and I’m sure Harryhausen movies in particular played a big part in kindling my interest in gods and monsters.

Anyway I digress, what about the movie. Given the subject matter I was probably always going to enjoy it on some level…and I did. But at the same time I’m not convinced its a particularly good movie even though, upon reflection a lot of the pieces fit perfectly. Great actors (if not always great dialogue), great action set-pieces and great special effects and yet, for some reason I have these nagging doubts.

• Did they do enough to make me care about those who die on the journey? 
• When they do get killed they often die with a far shot whimper that makes it difficult to know who just died. If you kill off a character at least give the scene some gravitas.
• Did I really care about Andromeda (note that there are a few deleted scenes on the dvd that really would have helped me care more about Andromeda and Argos).
• Did the romance between Io and Perseus work?

Overall, I enjoyed it. The good far outweighed the bad. 7 (out of 10)

Last of the Titans (2014)

Given Hollywood’s predisposition to making money, its likely we’ll see a third and final installment in the Titans trilogy in a few years time, so what would I do?

Well, with the Titans probably defeated/re-imprisoned at the end of the second movie (I’m guessing), I would run the Gigantomachy storyline, culminating in a battle with Typhon. But the twist here is that I would make it a sort of ‘magnificent seven’ greek heroes and include the likes of Hercules, Bellerophon, Theseus (Kratos dare we?) and so on. This could segue the studios neatly into a Hercules movie spin-off trilogy. As its the last in the trilogy I’d make Typhon a truly mountainous monster (one shot I have in mind is the old colossal Talos statue being stepped on and crushed by one of Typhon’s scaly feet). Of course we also need a journey for the heroes (to unearth Pandora’s box maybe?) and some human scale drama, Gaia sets the Amazons against the heroes? Anyway, I’m sure they’ll come up with something.

Kronos – Design

So I was thinking which of the above monsters don’t have (4E) D&D stats yet and the answer is of course Kronos. So I have decided to create him using a few ideas.

• Super-solo Rules: Okay basically a super-solo has more than one stat-block. For each additional stat-block you add, reduce all stat-blocks by 5 levels (2 stat-blocks = -5 levels, 3 = -10, 4 = -15, etc.)
• Immortality: A recent idea I have had is to reduce existing deity/immortal levels by 5 outside their home plane. So Orcus (for example) would be Level 28 instead of 33 when encountered outside his Realm of Thanatos. This is basically to reflect the old ‘double their hit points on the home plane mechanic from 1st Edition. Now you might ask, “Well why not simply add 5 levels on their home plane?” The reason I much prefer the reduction is to allow epic tier PCs (and players) to encounter gods and demon princes much sooner rather than later. You shouldn’t have to wait until maximum level before you get to the cool epic stuff, every level of the epic tier should have some. The second question might be, “Well I don’t want to have to create two sets of stats for every deity and demon prince!” You won’t have to, see the super-solo rules above, all you need to do would be to create the lower-level stats and use them twice (super-solo style) when encountered on the monsters home plane.
• Mega-size: Okay, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Kronos looks at least Mega-size (like the Kraken from the first movie) or even Giga-size (as the above movie poster infers) if he’s as big as an entire mountain/volcano. Now, yes I do have rules for mega-size, giga-size and so on, but I am not going to use them for THIS version of Kronos. I’m just going to make him Gargantuan. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, I have a pretty cool mechanic for the encounter that works best with keeping him Gargantuan size (the tic-tac-toe Volcano battle). Secondly, I don’t want to have to go over the mega-size rules just yet (I’m still tweaking them here and there). Thirdly, I haven’t seen the movie yet so I don’t really know how big Kronos is – I may well come back to the stats and augment them after I have seen it.
• Tic-tac-toe Volcano Battle: The basic idea for the battle I have in mind takes place within a (temporarily) dormant volcano. The ‘arena’ itself is 24×24 squares, which we can break down further in nine smaller areas of 8×8 squares. This is important because Kronos will be erupting through the crust at the centre of one of those 9 areas (he occupies a 4×4 square area at the centre of an 8×8 square). When bloodied, Kronos will sink down beneath the crust (leaving a zone of lava lasting until the end of the encounter) and erupt again from a different 8×8 square. When his first stat-block is destroyed, he sinks down again. BUT, next time he erupts out of the ground moving through THREE contiguous 8×8 squares (he jumps out of the first, dives into the second and erupts again out of a third. Hence the tic-tac-toe battle. Each zone he creates spawns a fiery creature at the start of EACH ROUND. When his second stat-block is bloodied, he sinks down again and repeats the THREE contiguous 8×8 square movement routine.
• Fire Resistance: On the one hand I don’t want to make Kronos completely toothless by letting PCs buff up on fire resistance for the fight. But at the same time I don’t necessarily want to nerf fire resistance wholesale. So my idea is that each time Kronos deals damage to a target he also strips away (a cumulative) 5 points of fire resistance until the end of the encounter.
• Level: I have a few different ideas on what level Kronos should be. Is he an Elder God…possibly. But its also possible that he’s just a Greater Deity. My gut instinct is telling me that after eons of imprisonment that upon release he’d be of Greater God status and have to slowly recover his full power to get back to Elder God. So under the new auspices (see Immortality above):

1. Quasi-deity = Levels 21-25 Elite (may not have a divine realm but if so, +5 on it)
2. Demi-deity = Levels 26-30 Elite (may not have a divine realm but if so, +5 on it)
3. Lesser deity = Levels 31-35 Elite (+5 Levels within divine realm)
4. Greater Deity = Levels 36-40 Elite (+5 Levels within divine realm)
5. Elder God = Levels 46-50 Elite (always considered on their home plane)

The above determinations assume that all immortal and primordial official 4E stats so far released are for beings encountered within their divine realms.

So if we assume Kronos starts at Level 40 Elite, then we reduce him first to Level 35 (solo) and then level 30 (super-solo). If he was to be encountered on his home plane then we could either add 5 levels or give him a third solo stat-block. Anyway, for this version we will be creating him at Level 30. After the movie I may go back and do a mega or giga-sized Elder God version which would be higher level. 

Hope you enjoy it. I’ll try to update a lot more often in future, if you have any feedback, let me know below or feel free to email me agooddesigner@hotmail.com

Kronos – Lord of the Titans

The good news is that the book is almost ready. Whereas before it needed a few weeks worth of work, it now only needs a few days worth of work. Luckily I have almost 2 weeks free from the start of November. I can’t conceive it not being finished within that period (and yes this is me saying that).

Being this near to the release I thought I would post up the contents (finally set in stone…I hope) and one or two previews. Just a note, I did notice (upon creating the pdf) the slight flaw on the right hand side of the page frame/border of page 11, I’ll look into fixing that.

In a nutshell, Manual of the Planes is a 160 page book with typical font size (58 lines per page), graphics and layout similar to every other 4th Edition book. The main authors listed are Richard Baker, John Rogers, Robert J. Schwalb and James Wyatt – so pretty much the creme’ de la creme’ of WotC’s 4th Edition talent.

The book is divided into seven chapters:

1. Exploring the Planes (28 pages)
2. The Feywild (16 pages)
3. The Shadowfell (14 pages)
4. The Elemental Chaos (22 pages…6 of those devoted to the Abyss)
5. The Astral Sea (28 pages…10 devoted to the Nine Hells)
6. Monsters of the Planes (24 pages)
7. Planar Characters (22 pages)

First Impressions

The cover is an homage to the 1st Edition version of the book that features one of the all time iconic covers by Jeff Easley. By comparison this new cover is, I’m sorry to say, rubbish. It features an adventuring party on an astral skiff being chased by an Astral Dreadnought – but there is no drama to the piece, no menace. The two characters at the front of the skiff don’t even acknowledge the presence of the dreadnought chasing them! Compare that to the original where the monster is a hulking ‘alien’ menace almost reaching out of the cover towards the reader, its a brilliant cover in everyway the update is not…although at least its better than the utter rubbish of the 3E cover.

…Make your own mind up which cover is better.

Small Piece of Trivia: id Software copied the head of the Astral Dreadnought from the 1E Manual of the Planes cover for the Cacodemon enemies in the videogame Doom.

The Good

Copycat: It copies the format of the 1st Edition book, in that each plane is given its own chapter, with notable places, races and faces (yes I enjoyed typing that) detailed for each plane. I mean if you are going to copy, do so from the best…and they do. The main four chapters (each detailing one of the planes) present enough information to get you interested in the location; each detailing maybe a dozen key races/inhabitants and another dozen key locations. Its a great place to hunt for adventure seeds and ideas.

Epic Content: Okay, so its the planes and thus you expect to see some epic content and there is a smattering of it here where we get Baphomet, Dispater and Graz’zt detailed. For those starved of epic content that probably constitutes ‘a lot’, certainly compared to recent WotC releases. Throw in the Astral Dreadnought, Brazen Devil and Storm Devil and its a veritable epic bestiary you might say.

Player Characters: The final chapter of the book adds something for PC’s (a clever idea making the book a potential purchase for DMs and Players alike). Its a small inoffensive chapter featuring 8 Paragon Paths (no Epic Destinies just to confirm), a few new rituals and some new magic items (no Artifacts). 

The Bad

The Art: Probably some of the weakest I have seen in a WotC release. Not only does the art seem fairly spartan but the pieces themselves were pretty uninspiring and a few others recycled from previous material. Bad art direction (Kate Irwin and Kevin Smith on those duties) in my opinion. There is one fantastic piece of a Goristro battling two gnolls, and the illustration of Baphomet is very nice, but much of the rest is pretty lacklustre. In terms of art and layout the Pathfinder books are definately much better looking in general.

Monster Mash: The book has a short 24 page monster section, nothing bad about that, many 4E books have such chapters. Here though, it really does seem like the monsters have been cobbled together from leftover scraps from other books. The book tries to cover four different planes (Astral, Elemental, Feywild and Shadowfell) but the coverage is totally lopsided. There is one monster for the Feywild, one for the Shadowfell and the rest are almost exclusively demons and devils. Any new monsters in the book I hear you ask…I’m afraid not, simply updates from past editions. It just smacks of lazy, uninspired design.

Here is the exact page breakdown for the 22 pages of the monster chapter: Astral Plane (9 pages worth and 6 of those are to do with the Nine hells); Elemental Plane (12 pages worth and 10 of those are to do with creatures from the Abyss); Feywild (1 page worth); Shadowfell (1 page worth). So basically 50% of the monsters detailed in the book are from the Abyss and 25% are from the Nine Hells. Not really what you would call diverse is it. I mean its Manual of the Planes but looking at the monster chapter you would think its Manual of the Abyss.

I mean here’s an idea, why not give each of the detailed planes equal coverage in the monster chapter…say 6 pages each. Instead of giving us some 50% of the content devoted to the Abyss (which is further explored in both the Plane Below AND the Demonomicon) how about picking out four themes/entities/personalities and really fleshing those out.

Nothing New to See Here: The 3rd Edition version of the Manual of the Planes wasn’t a great book, but what it did do was add something new to the planes by introducing both the Far Realm and some very interesting Demiplanes. In this book there is little new at all, in fact it even omits the Far Realm (okay its got 1 page) and the demiplane (1/4 page) elements from the 3E book!

This isn’t totally fair as you could say that the Feywild and the Shadowfell are both new to this edition of the game (and those were probably my favourite chapters of the book as a result). But they are also the shortest chapters AND the least well supported in the Monster chapter.

Conclusions

I think one of the problems with 4E is that it doesn’t gel well with the ‘jack of all trades’ approach. Its notable that (in my opinion) the books that have a strong focus (like Draconomicon or Open Grave) are often much better executed. This is undoubtedly because 4E encounters require more enemies and thus you need more space to flesh out various groups and themes.

On the one hand this book does the basic stuff pretty well. The overviews of the different planes are just the right length to get you interested and many of the areas seem very cool. But, by the same token there is no real support for any of the planes in the book beyond the overviews themselves. They could have easily taken one of the major ideas per plane and really fleshed that out, like the Archfey, the Dread Emperor, one of the Primordials, even Dispater who, while he IS detailed in the book, really doesn’t have enough support to make encounters leading up to such an encounter memorable. Flesh these elements out with a few Delves (like Draconomicon…like Open Grave) and you really increase the immediacy of the book in that DM’s can just pick-up and run stuff out of the book with little (or no?) preparation.

I’m at the end of the review and I’m still not sure what to score this so I will cheat and give it two different scores. The average score is for those people new to D&D who have never read a Manual of the Planes before from a past edition – because they will gain a good overview of the planes and take away some great adventure ideas. The low score is for those, like me, who have read past incarnations of Manual of the Planes - because we will have seen much of the basics before and the monster chapter just annoys the hell out of me.

Overall (if you have read a past edition of Manual of the Planes): 3 (out of 10)

Overall (if this is your first ever Manual of the Planes): 6 (out of 10)

Aftermath

I think they need to retire the Manual of the Planes format or really overhaul such books in favour of stronger themed supplements. Assuming we kept the formula from the book I personally would have retained the basic overview (adding the Far Realm as well) but then included a 3-4 encounter delve for each plane based on a specific theme/location/entity etc. I would have removed all the Abyss stuff because it gets so much coverage in other books that it was just overkill here. I would have made sure each plane gets an equal amount of content within the Monster Chapter. I also would have added something new, whether a new plane or interdimensional space or whatever.

Its notable that the recent Shadowfell boxed set supplement (which I may review in the future) has its own encounters book. While that product has its own criticisms (being wholly Paragon Tier was one of my pet peeves), it is much better focused, much better constructed, has that immediacy factor thats great for DMs, plus it adds a new dimension to play with the accompanying deck of cards.

The Great Rebellions

The fall of Lucifer from grace was the third (of five) angelic rebellions.

• Satan rebelled against GOD in the rebellion of entropy…that created the Sinistrals.
• Samael rebelled against Tetragrammaton in the rebellion of matter…that created the angels of punishment (yes I’ll need to find a better name for those).
• Lucifer rebelled against Metatron in the rebellion of fate…that created the Devils.
• Semyaza rebelled against Sandalphon in the rebellion of thought…that created the Grigori.
• Gog is prophesised to rebel against Adam Qadmon in the rebellion of time…which will create the Magog. This last rebellion has not yet transpired.

Ten Sins?

I always liked the idea of correlating the Hells with the concept of sin. While most are familiar with the seven deadly sins, after some study I found that there are actually ten sins, with Despair, Discouragement and Vanity being the three lesser known sins.

• Sin - Personification – Related Animal – Related Colour – Related Energy
• Pride – Lucifer – Horse – Purple – Lightning
• Rage – Asmodeus – Bear – Red – Fire
• Sloth – Mephistopheles – Goat – light Blue – Ice
• Gluttony – Baalzebul – Pig – Orange – Thunder
• Vanity – Lilith (or Glasya?) – Cat – White – Radiant
• Despair – Leviathan – Crocodile – Black – Psychic
• Lust – Belial – Bull – dark Blue – Necrotic
• Avarice - Mammon – Frog – Yellow – Acid
• Discouragement – Dispater – Owl – Grey – Force
• Jealousy – Belphegor – Wolf – Green – Poison

So what we have above is a breakdown of the Ten Hells and their various themes. The related animal section shows the features and characteristic’s devils representing that sin will take (see the medieval painting below). Related colours are the dominant colour of that sin. Related energy sources could involve the given layer of Hell as well as powers of the devils. The vast bulk of the above was gleaned from occult sources.

The Archdevils themselves would wield sin like a weapon, but would not necessarily take on the animalistic characteristics, or rather, they might still be able to assume a more humanoid/angelic form for a time.

Variety within the same Sin

Furthermore the sins themselves can be broken down into Cardinal (important) Sins, Sins and Venial (trivial) Sins. This gels nicely with the greater, lesser and least ranks of devils. Note also that each sin can be further broken down into smaller components…

e.g. Rage can be broken down into:

• Denial of Truth
• Self-Denial
• Impatience
• Vigilantism
• Murder
• Revenge
• Suicide

So while Greater Rage Devils may encompass all those above factors, standard Devils may only encompass one of each (thus we could have seven ‘flavours’ of standard Rage Devils. Other sins have a varying number of sub-themes as well.

Ten Hells?

As you can see from the list above, rather than having the familiar Nine Hells, I have adopted ten with Lucifer ruling the final strata of Hell…albeit imprisoned as he is (as per Dante’s Inferno…and also an ancient Dragon Magazine article from about 30 years ago). The tenth Hell wouldn’t be common knowledge and something of a ‘secret level’.

Hierarchy of the Hells

A mathematical puzzle thats been annoying me for a while now is how to balance the guards/inhabitants of a given deity’s realm (or in the examples I’ve been toying with, Archdukes of Hell).

The structure of the Hells is an interesting one in that there are (or were in 1E) clearly defined ranks:

• Nobility (Dukes and Archdukes)
• Greater Devils
• Lesser Devils
• Least Devils

On the face of it you could just assign 10 levels to each group. Least Devils cover 1-10, Lesser 11-20, Greater 21-30, Nobility 31-40.

But thats where you run into the first problem…interactivity. If there is a 10 level gap between monsters then one element cannot be used in conjunction with the other.

e.g. You can’t have a bunch of Level 19 Lesser Rage Devils in tandem with a Level 29 Greater Rage Devil. The gap in the math is too big.

So the first attempted solution is to make group 1 Minions, group 2 standard monsters, group 3 elites and group 4 solo monsters.

• Least Rage Devil = Level 17 Minion (the numbers at this point are hypothetical)
• Lesser Rage Devil = Level 19
• Greater Rage Devil = Level 25 Elite
• Rage Archduke = Level 30 Solo

Again this looks too big a gap, but what we can then do is divide it into two scales. Lets say one is for ‘wilderness’ encounters (in Hell), the other is for organised defenses inside an Archduke’s Fortress.

Wilderness Encounters

Least Rage Devil = Level 17 Minion
Lesser Rage Devil = Level 19
Greater Rage Devil = Level 20 Solo

Fortress Encounters

Lesser Rage Devil = Level 27 Minion
Greater Rage Devil = Level 25 Elite
Rage Archduke = Level 30 Solo

Adjectiveless Devils

These seem to have the missing element of Elite (wilderness) and Standard (fortress) encounters. Which prompts the creation of a fourth strata of devil, one that is neither lesser or greater but something in between.

Rage Devil (wilderness) = Level 20 Elite
Rage Devil (fortress) = Level 24

Nobility

In addition to the above gap between lesser and greater devils we can also see a similar gap between greater devils and archdukes, creating a fifth basic strata. To which I would suggest the following:

• Baron = Greater Devil +1
• President/Viscount = Greater Devil +2
• Count = Greater Devil +3
• Marquis = Greater Devil +4
• Duke/Prince = Greater Devil +5

The slight downside to the above is that some of the stronger nobles will be physically more powerful than the weaker Archdukes.

So the amended classifications are:

• Archduke/King – potentially gargantuan size (monstrous form)
• Noble – potentially huge size
• Greater Devil – large size
• Devil – medium size
• Lesser Devil – small size
• Least Devil – tiny size

Power of the Hells

The power of each Hell is derived from its Archduke, all devils of that corresponding sin, are indirectly empowered by the status of the Archduke within the ten. Also, its not always the case that the lower the tier of Hell, the more powerful the Archduke.

My idea was to base the relative standings of each Archdevil upon their 1st Edition Hit Points.

• Belphegor: n/a (assigned 122 hp)
• Dispater: 144 hp
• Mammon: 139 hp
• Belial: 154 hp
• Leviathan: n/a (assigned 177 hp)
• Lilith (Glasya: 96 hp)
• Baalzebul: 166 hp
• Mephistopheles: 188 hp
• Asmodeus: 199 hp
• Lucifer: 333 hp

The key then is to set a level for the least powerful Archduke and extrapolate the rest from there. But here we run into a number of problems.

Asmodeus is meant to be a Greater God in 4E. So do we then make Lucifer an Overgod (he is a fallen seraphim after all)? This in itself throws up all sorts of minor issues such as interactivity.  If Asmodeus is (for example) 5 levels more powerful than the next most powerful Archdevil, then are Asmodeus’ regular devils 5 levels more powerful than the next most powerful devils?

My initial solution was going to have Asmodeus above the other Archdukes, with Lucifer above him again. But the more I wrestled with the problem the more I leant towards the idea that there are two Asmodeii (if thats the plural of Asmodeus?). Or rather that he has two forms. The first is Asmodeus, the second form is the monstrous Aeshma-deva. If Asmodeus is ever slain, Aeshma-deva is released. This way we can keep the hierarchy of Hell relatively intact.

• Lucifer: Level 45 Solo
• Asmodeus: Level 34 Solo (Aeshma-deva: Level 39 Solo)
• Mephistopheles: Level 33 Solo
• Baalzebul: Level 31 Solo
• Lilith/Glasya: Level 26 Solo
• Leviathan: Level 32 Solo
• Belial: Level 30 Solo
• Mammon: Level 28 Solo
• Dispater: Level 29 Solo
• Belphegor: Level 27 Solo

So that would outline the Greater Devils as follows.

• Greater Pride Devil: Level 30 Elite…also Level 40 Elite “Lucifugi” (Avatars of Lucifer)
• Greater Rage Devil: Level 29 Elite…also Level 34 Elite “Heliophobes” (Black Angels)
• Greater Sloth Devil: Level 28 Elite
• Greater Glutton Devil: Level 26 Elite
• Greater Vanity Devil: Level 21 Elite
• Greater Despair Devil: Level 27 Elite
• Greater Lust Devil: Level 25 Elite
• Greater Avarice Devil: Level 23 Elite
• Greater Discouragement Devil: Level 24 Elite
• Greater Jealousy Devil: Level 22 Elite

Nobles would be 1-5 levels higher than Greater Devils. Normal Devils would be 5 levels lower. Lesser Devils 10 levels lower and Least Devils 15 levels lower with maybe the Lemures as the absolute lowest 20 levels below.

Graz’zt would have been one of the Heliophobes who turned on Asmodeus and fled to the Abyss.

Benefits of the Above Approach?

Yes its been something of a ramble on my part. But I think the above ideas as a framework would create a much stronger and interesting Hell.

1. It gives all the Archdukes much stronger identities.
2. It creates devils of the appropriate levels to populate the Hells (but also allows for variety within the same sin).
3. We can split the same devils between Wilderness and Fortress Encounters allowing for different levels of challenge using the same monsters.
4. It promotes far better interactivity between the devils, making encounter creation much easier.
5. It ups the level of the basic devils which gives the Hells a greater sense of threat and not somewhere you venture to on a whim.

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this brief glimpse of ideas related to future products (that may or may not see the light of day knowing me). If you have any thoughts or comments feel free to post below.

Anyway, where were we. I mentioned it over at ENWorld a few weeks ago, but its worth reiterating here. I have divided the Vampire Bestiary into three books as follows:

1. Vampire Bestiary: Mountain of the Cannibal God…so as you would expect this book features cannibals and a few relevant animals as well as the sort of vampires (and a few wights) you would expect to find in the jungle. The book also includes some traps and hazards as well as a mini-adventure (the titular mountain).
2. Vampire Bestiary: Temple of Death…an in-depth look at the Thuggee Cult and priesthood of Kali as well as a large number of vampires related to Hindu myth and legend. Again expect more traps, hazards and features as well as a mini-adventure.
3. Vampire Bestiary: Dracula’s Castle…all the classic vampire stereotypes as well as a few more obscure European vampire monsters. Also includes sections on vampire coffins, vampire familiars, vampire hunters and vampire intelligences, plus a few more wights. This part also contains an overview of vampire religions, society and takes a look at the vampire’s place in the universe. As well as sporting the now familiar mini-adventure, traps and hazards.

Each book will be approximately 56 pages and I’m pencilling in a price of about $7.50. I think each includes roughly 32 stat blocks (give or take) with vampires usually representing 50% of the book (or slightly more in the case of the third pdf.) Once I have all three pdfs on sale I will combine all three (into the proper Vampire Bestiary) into one book (probably a $15 pdf).

Here is the current cover for the first pdf. Not happy about using a monochrome image for the cover but I don’t think I can afford three full colour cover commissions…so it is what it is. I do really like the Wendigo illustration from Peter Szmer though (and its a bit obscured on the cover, I had to crop bits to get it to fit but suffice to say you will see the whole thing uncluttered as one of the interior illustrations for the wendigo). Obviously the full colour Kali illustration will be used for the main book (and likely the Temple of Death pdf).

So the good news is that the first pdf needs about 2 weeks of work for completion. However, that was true at the start of July as well (see my opening paragraph of this update for what happened). The bad news is that I am going on holiday in a few days time and there is no way I’ll be able to put in 2 weeks worth of work until September. So I’ll stick my neck out and say it will definately be released before the end of September.

With no further distractions I should be able to finish part 2 (in October) and 3 (in November).

A few topics ago, I mentioned that Dragons in 4th Edition were not proper Epic Tier monsters. So this article seeks to address why that is and offer some alternatives.

Just Not Epic Enough…

The dragons in the game cover the whole spectrum of levels but the dragons of the later age categories are not really any more powerful other than basic statistical changes. Now you could say that its statistically better – therefore its better. But in terms of a threat to a large area (say a country) an ancient dragon isn’t that much more destructive than a mere adult dragon.

If It Ain’t Broke, Why Fix It?

The dragons in the books work perfectly well, so why even bother messing with them? If a house doesn’t have solid foundations, then building another storey (or tier shall we say) is likely to be a ramshackle affair and fall down on your face. Basically dragons in 4E at the epic tier are simply not daunting opponents. They are not monsters that can threaten an empire or world and without ‘fixing’ them we cannot really begin to build ‘proper’ epic tier dragons.

So my proposal is that to make your game epic the existing dragons in 4E  need to be brought down a peg or two as follows.

• Gargantuan Dragons = 16-20 Solo (White 16, Black 17, Green 18, Blue 19, Red 20 etc.)
• Huge  Dragon = 11-15 Solo
• Large Dragon = 6-10 solo
• Medium Dragon = 1-5 Solo
• Small Dragon = 1-5 Elite

The benefits of this approach are that you can easily slide ranks up and down to better create a Dragons Lair, for instance.

Late Paragon Tier: Dragon’s Lair (Ancient Red Dragon)

• Gargantuan Red Dragon Mother = Level 20 Solo Soldier
• Huge Red Dragon’s Mate = Level 20 Elite Soldier
• Large Red Dragon’s Offspring (those about to leave the lair and start their own families) = Level 19 Standard Soldiers
• Medium Red Dragon’s Children = Level 22 Minion Soldiers
• Small Red Dragon’s Babies = Level 15 Standard Soldier (Swarms)

As you can see above, reducing the gaps between age categories/sizes to 5 levels better enables each age category to interact with one another (by reducing the level spread).

Late Paragon Tier: The Darksword Knights

One bunch of recurring foes fought in Simon’s early campaign were the Darksword Knights. A bunch of Lawful Evil, Druaga worshipping warriors who also had a pact with Tiamat that supplied them with dragon eggs which they then raised into maturity and used for steeds. Anyway, I was thinking (in what I think is a deviation) that each chapter of the order (of which there are 5) would have its own master and they would reside in a different location/climate and be restricted to raising Dragons of a single type. Collectively the Darksword Knights would fall under the eadership of the most powerful chapter (possibly the Red Dragon chapter).

• Grandmaster of the Darksword Knights = Level 20 Elite Soldier…rides a Huge Dragon
• Masters of the Darksword Knights = Levels 16-19 Elites (mainly Soldiers)…ride Huge Dragons
• Darksword Knight = Level 16-20 Soldiers…ride Large Dragons
• Darksword Warrior = Level 16-20 Minion Soldiers
• Darksword Marauder = Level 17-21 Mobs

Early Epic Tier: Dragonflight

One of the suggestions I made in the Ten Commandments of Epic article was that epic characters should be fighting against whole squadrons of dragons. Making the above level changes lets drop everything down a rank and see what happens:

• Gargantuan Red Dragon = Level 25 Elite Soldier
• Huge Red Dragon = Level 24 Soldier
• Large Red Dragon = Level 27 Minion Soldiers

Again the level spread is kept fairly tight and you could easily introduce a large force of dragons (possibly with riders) to threaten a nation and its heroes.

But What About Epic Dragons Then?

Making the above changes opens up the entire Epic Tier (and beyond). So what do we do to fill that gap? In 3rd Edition dragons more powerful than the regular breeds were refered to as Epic Dragons (which were basically Divine Dragons). I later added to that Cosmic (Space Dragons) and Nehaschimic (Interdimensional Dragons). Others then proposed Muhlatimic for those living outside our universe. So simply to take advantage of the different tiers in 4E I suggest the following:

• Epic (Divine) Dragons = +10 Levels (Mega-sized…like Godzilla)
• Cosmic (Space) Dragons = +20 Levels (Giga-sized…about the size of a mountain)
• Eschatolic (Doomsday) Dragons = +30 Levels (Tera-sized…about the size of a planet)
• still pondering over the rest for now.

Now you might think, well at +30 levels no one will ever need Eschatolic Dragons but here’s the clever bit. Sizes bigger than Gargantuan (such as Mega, Giga, Tera etc.) all use the super-solo rules.

Super-Solo Rules?

Okay, I was planning to post up the Super-Solo rules here after the Vampire Bestiary is released (and thats still the plan). But I suppose it won’t hurt to give people a sense of the basic mechanic. Super-solo monster’s have multiple stat-blocks. Nothing new there of course, Lolth in Monster Manual 3 has two stat-blocks for instance. The difference here is that they have multiple FULL SOLO stat-blocks. Each new stat-block also drops the monster down 5 Levels.

So lets say Tiamat (an Ancient Epic Dragon) was a Level 30 Solo Monster. But because she is Mega-sized she gains an extra stat-block and her level drops by 5. So she would be a Level 25 Mega-solo Monster. So fighting Tiamat would be akin to battling TWO Solo monsters back to back.

If we assume Typhon is an Ancient Cosmic Dragon was a Level 36 Solo Monster, then because he was Giga-sized he would gain TWO extra stat-blocks but his level would drop by 10. So Typhon would be a Level 26 Giga-solo  Monster. So Typhon would be like fighting THREE Solo monsters end to end.

Of course the above is just the basic mechanic for setting the level. Not the full rules for running Super-solo’s. But I think they give a clear idea of how powerful monsters can be at the Epic and subsequent Immortal Tier.

The main problem with Super-solo monsters is of course the same problems that affect solo monsters in general..only amplified. So you need to take extra care to craft super-solo monsters into challenging and exciting opponents who can hold the interest of a party.

Collateral Damage

When we create epic or immortal tier dragons one of the things we need to implement is how they affect the geography of a location. If we look at say, a Godzilla movie, what we notice is that a full city would just get devastated in a matter of minutes through a combination of Godzilla either simply stomping about, attacking buildings physically or using other powers like his atomic breath. So most mega-size creatures would cause earthquakes (stomping), hurricanes (flying) or tidal waves (swimming) simply by their movements.

• Mega sized: Destroy a city inside a few minutes, destroy a building in one round.
• Giga-sized: Destroy a country inside a few minutes, destroy a city in one round.
• Tera-sized: destroy a planet inside a few minutes, destroy a country in one round.

Another aspect of monsters of this magnitude is that they leave behind a lot of devastation in their wake. So they’ll create zones that will last until the end of the encounter (at least): flooded areas, falling masonry, difficult terrain etc.

I won’t be talking about adventures that do not have up to date (post MM3)  monster damages, I assume most people are aware of that by now and will fix this problem in older adventures of their own volition.

I do want to add that some of the following complaints and criticisms are starting to be addressed by WotC (which is a good thing) and some of their more recent efforts and forthcoming products show a lot more promise.

1. Aesthetics

Lack of Art: The severe lack of art within the Encounter Books of the official WotC really hurts the aesthetics of the product. While I understand the idea behind putting the art in a seperate book so that it can be shown to the players without exposing details of the encounter you also have to give a thought to the DMs who are reading the book in the first place. The encounter section is like a barren wasteland of muted brown stat blocks.

Type of Art: Secondly, a lot of art is functional rather than evocative. Yes they often show the monsters, or they’ll show the room you are in, but they rarely if ever show sample characters interacting (either battling monsters or escaping/suffering traps and hazards). Note that these are exactly the sort of illustrations they show at the beginning of the core book chapters and they are generally brilliant at stting the scene (far more so than an empty room or posing monster will accomplish).

Maps: I fully understand WotC’s reasoning behind using the maps they do, selling D&D Tiles makes good business sense. The maps themselves always look lovely. So whats the problem here? Maybe its just me, but the hand drawn maps always seemed a bit more personal. While isometric hand drawn maps always had to be admired for exploring the third dimension.

Solutions

The obvious idea would be to integrate more art into the Encounter Section of the adventure. This would be much easier to accomplish if the space allocated to encounters was variable, rather than the ‘choking’ double page format we are accustomed to.

As to the type of art, I’d love to see populated location shots. Not just Room #2 in its barren delights. But Room #2 featuring some adventurers fighting with the Spider-Dragons (or whatever).

I don’t see WotC changing their map format anytime soon and deep down I suspect this is just a personal issue I have with the maps rather than something that would be better if changed.

2. All Too Easy

Enemies in 4E adventures may as well have a big ‘L’ branded on their foreheads because they are patently designed to lose. Yes the PCs are supposed to win, but 4E really does seem to play things ridiculously safe. A cursory glance over the 4E adventures shows that the vast majority of encounters are in the -1 to +1 EL range for where your PCs are expected to be. That in itself throws up a few problems. Firstly, at Paragon and even more at Epic tier play levels, same level encounters are virtual formalities. The second problem is that there is little if any impression of heightened drama via upping the threat level. Facing the guards at the throne room of the big boss is generally as perilous as the bandit encounter you faced earlier in the adventure. Yes, the guards may be higher level, but so are the PCs now. My point is that adventures should get tougher as you reach the climactic culmination of the story…but they don’t. They’ll be the same +1 EL with the occasional +2 thrown in.

Solutions

Acknowledge five different levels of threat.

1. Green = easy (-1 or lower EL)
2. Blue = typical (+/-0 EL)
3. Yellow = tricky (+1 EL)
4. Orange = tough (+2 EL)
5. Red = dangerous (+3 or higher EL).

Modify those ELs by +1 per additional tier (So a ‘Red’ encounter at Epic Tier is +5 or better).

Now divide your adventure into 3 Acts. Ensure that the encounters in Act #1 average in the Blue, those in Act #2 average in the Yellow and those in Act #3 average in the Orange.

e.g. If you have 10 encounters in Act #2 you might have one green, two blue, four yellow, two orange and one red encounter. While if you have 8 encounters in Act #3 you could have two yellow, four orange and two red.

Remember that if PCs are expected to go up levels during the adventure (and probably will every 8-9 encounters), you also have to increase the Encounter Levels to compensate.

3. Familiarity Breeds Contempt

4th Edition created its own functional style to represent encounters. That style presents all the information within a two-page spread, including: the statblocks, tactics, features and playing map. In terms of the ease of play its as concise as possible while still giving all the relevant details. So whats the problem then you might wonder? Several minor annoyances have just started to grate on me.

• Sharing the Spotlight: Given that virtually every encounter shares the same format from lowly guard posts to end boss battles it means they all command the same attention. No encounter stands out as more important than any other.
• Sterility: There is an inherent sterility to each encounter because they all look and read the same.
• Too Much Information: Do we really need that much information for every encounter?

Solutions

Firstly, break encounters down into four groups (Half Page, Full Page, Double Page and Quadruple Page) ranked by importance.

• Half Page = Trivial Encounter (Guard post etc.)
• Full Page = Typical Encounter
• Double Page = Important Encounter (probably featuring a named NPC)
• Quadruple Page = End of an ‘Act’ Boss Encounter.

Secondly, play about with the backgrounds a bit, perhaps behind the text you could have semi-transparent illustrations of the monsters. Or possibly have the page border colour/design change depending upon the threat of the encounter. Dangerous encounters might have a red border to highlight the danger, while those with green borders will signify easy encounters (Green = easy, Blue = typical, Yellow = tough, Orange = very tough, Red = deadly).

4. Forgettable Villains

Lack of Personality: I touched on this with the Prince of Undeath review. None of the NPCs are fleshed out to any degree. In fact most are faceless mooks thrown into the meat-grinder that is the PC Party.

Conspicuous by their Absence: The vast majority of major villains you don’t get to interact with until the end of the adventure. Now that might be okay if the adventure is a short sharp 3-6 encounter fracas spanning 1-2 sessions of game time. But if you are talking some 25-30 encounter marathon then it could be months before the villain gets to appear or do something. 

Solutions

NPCs: Any named NPC in an adventure needs to be fleshed out with at least a paragraph or two detailing their background, goals, personality and so forth. This should be a no-brainer, but all too often NPCs are just stat blocks.

Recurring Villain: One of the main tricks used in storytelling (and underused in adventures) is that of the recurring villain. With initial encounters involving the heroes being forced to escape or with the villain escaping from the heroes. The former is better for building a strong physical villain, while the latter is more useful when presenting a scheming trickster or wizard type.

This approach establishes the villain early in the adventure so its not some faceless evil alone in a tower’s throne room somewhere. Of course sometimes you really do want the ultimate villain to be locked away somewhere or unseen until the climax. In such cases you want to introduce a key henchman and have them fill the role of menacing, recurring threat.

5. Lack of Verisimilitude

Instead of designing ‘the world’, or ‘the castle’ or ‘the dungeon’ and then letting PCs interact with it, all too frequently you get the impression that the setting/dungeon is designed around the PCs. This was especially apparent in the E-series modules where offensive and defensive forces seemed bewilderingly small for such monumental events.

Solutions

Understand the resources the BBEG can call upon. If that villain is ultimately Orcus then he will have millions of troops, and dozens of powerful subordinates. Instead he seems to invade the palace of the Raven Queen with a handful of wraithes and a bunch of skeleton mooks!?

As a rule of thumb:

• Main Villain = Solo Level x
• Lieutenants = Elite Level x (Numbers: less than 10)
• Henchmen = Standard rank Level x-1 (Numbers: less than 100)
• Elite Guards = Minions Level x+2 (Numbers: less than 1000)

Remember also that you can modify the rank to change the level (see No sense of Progression).

6. No Sense of Progression

One thing I noticed heavily used within the E-series was the propensity to fight higher level (yet still the same rank) versions of the same monster. So we get to fight the L23 Elite Glabrezu…then later fight the Level 26 Elite Glabrezu. What this does is take away from any sense of empowerment the Players feel from levelling up. ”Why are we still fighting the same monsters we were 5 levels ago and they are still just as tough?” 

Solutions

Never use same rank versions of higher level monsters unless they are for critically important NAMED NPCs and thus unique monsters in their own right.

If you want to use the same monsters at lower or higher level then simply change the monsters rank as follows:

• Standard to Minion = Level +8
• Elite to Standard = Level +4
• Solo to Elite = Level +5

Obviously reverse by lowering the level if you go the other way (ie. Elite to Solo = -5).

• Level 35 Minion Glabrezu
• Level 27 Standard (rank) Glabrezu
• Level 23 Elite Glabrezu
• Level 18 Solo Glabrezu

7. No Thinking Outside the Box

When D&D was in its infancy, there was more of an ‘anything goes’ spirit. Designers were not afraid to break rules or add new rules or just throw in crazy ideas. But somewhere along the way that spirit (of adventure?) seems to have been lost. I have forgotten the last time a WotC adventure surprised me. Thats not to say a given adventure cannot be good even if it doesn’t surprise me (I hope I am not turning into some jaded thirty-something ‘hater’). But they do for the most part seem to stick to a tried and tested formula.

Monster Variants: While I criticised the idea of monster variants above (albeit specifically when a monster is simply given a few levels), one annoying gripe for 4E is the propensity to use vanilla monsters straight out of the Monster Manuals. While its true this was also done in the past, the difference today is that monster stat blocks take up about a column of text, whereas in 1st Edition they were a less intrusive 4-5 lines of text. But the crux of this point is that if you include an Iron Golem (for example)  in a module, its much cooler to add some unique ideas than just plonk down the vanilla stat block. Take the examples of Maure Castle or Revenge of the Iron Lich, both of which feature imaginative variant Iron Golems.

I’m not saying every monster needs to be unique. But I think those of elite or solo rank would benefit from this idea.

Special Rules: I had become so brainwashed by official 4E adventures from WotC that it was a shock reading something like Revenge of the Iron Lich which completely threw the rule book out the window with off the wall ideas such as Condition Cards, Points Scoring System and a Time Limit. None of which made it any less D&D, but simply freshened up a format that was getting a bit stale.

Solutions

Don’t be hamstrung by convention. In fact if anything try and be as different as possible. If you want to make an adventure stand out, try thinking ‘outside the box’.

Do something different with every Elite or Solo monster. It doesn’t have to be a major change or even a mechanical change (the White Dragon is really an Albino Red Dragon for instance). I always wanted to put a Two-headed Beholder in an adventure.

8. Time Duration (too long)

I wonder if the typical approach of 25-30 encounters is too long a slog for a single adventure.  If you play twice a month then its going to take you about 4-5 months to get through one of those. While that amount of time investment is okay if everyone’s having fun, it seems like a long slog if they are not. Also what happens if one of the party get killed mid-dungeon, do you retreat (to get them raised) and have to plough through the encounters again, or do you fight on while that Player takes a month or two off?

Secondly, many modules this length seem to struggle to retain any sort of theme at all, plus how long can a given theme retain its interest. Do you want to be fighting undead and demons for 30 encounters?

Solutions

Don’t overstay your welcome. At best 6-8 encounters should be the maximum time investment in one location, preferably 3-4. If its a big Castle/Dungeon, then have maybe 3-4 per strata.

Pick two themes for each adventure/location. For instance Revenge of the Iron Lich would be “Undead meets Iron“.

9. Too Much Combat

I love 4E combat. However, too much of a good thing can be bad for you. One of the lessons I learned from Revenge of the Iron Lich is that if you give a greater variety of encounters you make the eventual combat encounters stand out more. That adventure has a healthy mix between combat, exploration, puzzle, skill challenge and trap encounters that not only keeps the players guessing whats coming next but also keeps each element fresh.

Solutions

Already solved in Revenge of the Iron Lich. Simply have a greater variety of encounter types. Ensure combat encapsulates no greater than 50% of the total encounters.

10. Too Scripted

With 4E adventures (more often than not) designed around individual encounters rather than the more freeform sandbox style. There seems to be an inherent railroading of PCs along the path the designers want them to take, rather than PCs influencing the story of their own volition.

The majority of official 4E adventures follow an A to B format that parallels the story the designers want you to follow. But the problem with this inflexibility is that it removes a lot of the impact of decision making from the players who are basically jumping through hoops.

The reason for this is probably so that as little effort as possible gets wasted. If a module provides several different paths through it, then some might get missed by a large percentage of the audience. While this was perfectly acceptable in 1st/2nd Edition modules, the amount of effort (double page spread) put into each 4E encounter means that designers will want everyone to see every encounter.

Solutions

Small Scale Approach: If you are familiar with 4E D&D modules you will probably have heard the name Irontooth. Irontooth was a goblin who became notorious for Total Party Kills in Keep on the Shadowfell. The reason being that Irontooth and his cronies were summoned as reinforcements from an antechamber 3 rounds after the initial battle started, meaning PCs invariably ended up facing two encounters in one. As such WotC never seemed to repeat this trick – which is a shame because the idea of “Summoning More Guards” is a staple of the genre. In my opinion the game can only benefit from these more fluid combats.

Larger Scale Approach: The idea of wasting time on encounters not everyone will get to see is overturned by applying the idea of having encounters of different importance given the appropriate page space to match (as per the Familiarity Breeds Contempt point).

I am a fan of the idea of giving players multiple paths to take to get to the ultimate goal. I also like the idea that your actions during the adventure can affect the outcome.

So each adventure would have a Start, a Middle and an End (or Acts One, Two and Three if you prefer). 

• Act #1 would be inflexible. Its the information dump part of the story. The bit where something happens and then the PCs react to that event.
• Act #2 will have multiple paths/options/approaches to reaching the ultimate goal of Act #3.
• Act #3 is the climax against the villain. The events of Act #2 can have a ripple effect on Act #3 (maybe the PCs killed the chief henchman during Act #2). The benefit of this approach is that the actions of the PCs have visceral consequences upon the story.

Lets apply that approach to E3: Prince of Undeath.

• Act #1: The forces of Orcus lay seige to the Raven Queen’s realm. Orcus leads them himself and has the Shard of Evil with him. The PCs are defending the City at the start but the Raven Queen says Orcus cannot be defeated directly and suggests some ideas as to how they can weaken Orcus enough to give her a chance of winning.
• Act #2:  The PCs have three impossible tasks. Firstly they can travel to the bottom of the Abyss, and somehow gain their own Shard of Evil to counter the one held by Orcus. Secondly, the heroes could destroy Orcus’ fortress Redhold and convince enemies of the Prince of Undeath (such as Demogorgon) that this would be a great time for an invasion. The third task is to travel to the Forge of Four Worlds where an artifact exists that can unmake the Shard of Evil.
• Act #3: By the time the PCs do one of the tasks in Act #2, Orcus is at the gates of the Raven Queen’s palace. By the time they do two tasks, Orcus is battling the Raven Queen. By the time they do all three tasks, Orcus will have defeated the Raven Queen (but arguably the power of his Shard will be spent).

In conclusion…

I hoped you liked the article. It is by no means exhaustive in its detailing of problems or solutions but I hope its enough of a start to get people discussing it. Feel free to leave any comments below, whether suggestions of additional problems with 4E adventures or ideas for possible solutions to the problems I have listed.

Note: This is not a playtest review.

First Impressions

Finally, at long last Wizards treat us with an actual cover worthy of the source material and the epic tier itself. Wayne Reynold’s is back with an even more impressive painting of Orcus than his wonderful Monster Manual cover (easily the best of the Monster Manual covers to date). I still prefer pale and pasty, bloated Orcus to the angry red, ‘buff’ Orcus, but I have never seen any illustration by Wayne Reyolds I didn’t think was brilliant and he certainly doesn’t disappoint here at all. Great cover – off to a wonderful start.

Inside is the, now familiar, slipcase format with 32 page adventure book, a 64 page encounters book and one double-sided miniatures map. Its notable that there are 13 illustrations in the entire book (discounting maps of course) which is basically one every 7 1/2 pages, even though nearly all (10 in fact) of the illustrations are squeezed into the last 6 pages of the adventure book. After seeing all the WotC adventure path modules I am definately of the opinion that divorcing the artwork from the main body of the work is a massive mistake, leading to the book seeming a bit sterile. What artwork there is in the book is nice though, with depictions of Pit Fiend vs. Balor and Timesus the Primordial being my personal favourites.

The story involves the heroes stopping Orcus’ plans to become the god of death by supplanting the Raven Queen herself. But ultimately its all a bit of a wild goose chase until the showdown at the end. But I suppose the journey is half the fun, even if a cynical mind might see it as ‘grinding’ to become powerful enough to defeat Orcus. I think the Paizo method used in the Savage Tide (Demogorgon centric) Adventure Path works much better in that the PCs can take on Demogorgon at any time (but will probably get slaughtered) so they find ways level the playing field by weakening Demogorgon directly and indirectly while gaining powerful allies and items. In Prince of Undeath there is none of that foresight.

The adventure itself takes place in five areas:

• Chaos Ship (5 encounters): A ship that can travel the Elemental Chaos. These encounters are spread over the course of the adventure.
• Red Hold (11 encounters): Orcus ‘impenetrable’ citadel at his capital city Everlost.
• Forge of the Four Worlds (7 encounters): The place where the Timesus ‘jigsaw’ was put back together.
• Abyssal Nadir (3 encounters): The deepest depth of the Abyss where Timesus is trying to break off shards from the Heart of the Abyss.
• Court of the Raven Queen (4 encounters): Where Orcus and his forces are in the midst of defeating the Raven Queen.

The Good

1. Creatures: The adventure presents some new monsters and conceptually I really liked them: Abyssal Servitors (demonic beasts of burden); Fathomals (creatures that live at the bottom of the Abyss); Forgeborn Abominations and of course Timesus the Primordial himself, who is conceptually very cool even though his stat block looks quite flimsy.
2. The Chaos Ship: The basic idea of the chaos ship has a lot of potential, unfortunately that potential is not really explored here becoming more of a convenient bridge between the different locations rather than offering any particularly new experiences.

The Bad

1. Grinding: The PCs begin this adventure (arguably) not powerful enough to slay Orcus, by the end of the module he poses little threat to them. Instead of resolving this power shift with story based objectives (like Savage Tide) this module just seems to embrace the metagaming conceit that the PCs will simply level up by the time they beat past Orcus’ mooks. In fact Orcus would actually be smarter pitting no demons or undead against the heroes because doing that only serves to make them stronger.
2. Just not Epic Enough: No real gravitas to events transpiring. Check out my article The Ten Commandments of Epic, this adventure ticks few if any of those boxes.
3. Lack of Personality: Partly to blame with the format and partly with the writing a lot of the adventure is soulless (no pun intended). Here’s an example of what I mean. There is a Vampire Lord in the adventure who is a Level 28 Elite Soldier. Thats higher level than a Balor and almost a Demigod in his own right. So a fairly important character you would imagine. What does the module tell us about him…basically nothing. His name is mentioned briefly (and not even within his own stat-block where he is referred to as simply “Vampire Lord”). Nothing about his background, history, role in Orcus’ retinue, personality. He’s just a faceless mook. Just like the Balor Champion in the book (not even given a name even though he is in effect a Demigod), just like Harthoon the Lich (who has about 1 line detailing his duties), just like the Pit Fiend Captain. Its almost as if they are not even trying. The important NPCs are utterly devoid of personality. I’m not saying every single NPC needs an essay accompanying them, but pick out maybe half a dozen important NPCs and flesh them out. Give DMs something to get their teeth into. Here, the NPCs are just stat-blocks.
4. Meagre Challenge: While I haven’t played this module yet I have read several reports from others who have and its pretty clear from them that the encounters as written were almost zero challenge for the epic tier PCs. Firstly, monster damage had not been updated to DMG2/MM3 standards at this point. Secondly, at the back end of the epic tier, Player Characters are so powerful that Encounter Levels of even +1 and +2 are basically speed-bumps. Orcus himself is slightly tweaked from his Monster Manual stats but really nowhere near far enough to make him a credible threat. See my version of Orcus for a much sterner test.
5. Railroading: I touched on this above with regards the story. The players are sort of expected to jump through hoops: go here, then here. Theres no real freedom of choice or options within the adventure. Unlike say the final installments of Savage Tide Adventure Path where the heroes have maybe 4-5 different options (to gain allies, artifacts, weaken Demogorgon personally or slay his key allies) before taking on the Prince of Demons. 
6. Level Scaling: Something that annoyed me when reading over the adventure is the inherent Level Scaling of 4th Edition Monsters. Here’s an example of what I mean. A glabrezu is a Level 23 Elite Brute in 4th Edition. In this module you fight a Level 26 Elite Brute Glabrezu ‘Gatewarder’. Now my point here is that if the PCs keep levelling up and the DM keeps throwing higher level versions of basically the same monster at them (and I should point out there are a dozen such examples of this in this book) then the players won’t have any sense of progression. What makes this all the more frustrating is that 4E has its own built in mechanics for giving a sense of progression – Monster Ranks (ie. minion, standard, elite, solo). Instead of fighting higher level Glabrezu in the same numbers (typically 1 leading some other monsters) they could have used a single 4E Glabrezu in E1: Death’s Reach, a handful of Level 27 standard versions in E2: Kingdom of the Ghouls and a large number of Level 35 Minion versions in E3: Prince of Undeath. This gives the players a much better sense of progression in that the monsters they struggled with a few adventures ago they are now hacking down with ease. Instead of, we are higher level now but these Glabrezu are also higher level – it totally negates any sense of progression.
7. Verisimilitude: A number of things struck me as odd reading over the module. For instance, where were the guards of the Raven Queen? Did Orcus really invade her Realm with about 2 dozen mooks? Why does no one in Orcus’ retinue have a name or personality? Surely when designing a module around Orcus you have to give some thought and consideration to the type of resources a demon prince can and should be able to bring to bear on a situation. If you think of Orcus as ‘the President’ then he’s likely to have specialised personel for both strike teams and bodyguards. Epic tier Secret Service Bodyguards and ex-Navy Seal Black-Ops teams, James Bond-esque lone assassins, funding to call in the best Mercs in the business, a network of undercover operatives, tech teams tracking with satellites and cctv. The greatest travesty of all is that Orcus already has these characters sprinkled throughout his history. But they are absent from this adventure, as is virtually any personality.

Conclusion

I think this is (fractionally) the strongest of the E series of adventures but for the most part doesn’t escape its planar dungeon crawl feel. After seeing Revenge of the Iron Lich I am also convinced the WotC approach leans too heavily towards combat (and for the record I am a big fan of 4E’s combat).

Overall 5 (out of 10)

The ‘E’ series in totality…

Not epic enough, in fact I would go as far as to say not epic at all. Contrasts with Paizo’s Savage Tide are unfavourable to say the least.

Firstly, slight apologies. I had been sick with the cold for almost two weeks and it just knocked me off schedule, hence the lack of updates (I’ll try and make up for it over the next week).

The Vampire Bestiary is not yet complete but within a week I should have an early 80 pages ‘done and dusted’ version ready for a few souls to give me their opinions of. The remaining pages will still take a few weeks but they are themselves almost complete. In terms of interior art I think we are about 9 illustrations away from the full quota.

This is Preview 4 of the Vampire Bestiary. In the previous previews I revealed:

• Preview 3: Cannibals
• Preview 2: Vampires
• Preview 1: Vampire Monster and Twin Wight

The weird thing about the above monsters is that since the previews I have probably reworked and revised them all several times, for instance the Level 4 Controller Witchdoctor is now a Level 3 Elite Controller. The basic Vampire is now a Level 8 Skirmisher rather than Level 11…and others have changed as well. However, I’ll leave the Previews as they are, in effect as variants.

The Idol of Kali

Initially I was planning to release the Psoglav (a powerful vampire monster) as the last Preview of the Vampire Bestiary. However, the art is being handled sequentially and the Psoglav art is near the back of the book so it will be one of the last to be completed. So instead I decided to showcase another solo monster from the book, the Idol of Kali.

The idol is heavily inspired by the monster encountered in the Golden Voyage of Sinbad movie. So its a tribute to Ray Harryhausen in that respect. Of course, as you’ll see when you read the monster entry, I took the basic inspiration and then did something totally new with it.

I hope you all like it. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

This is the second Epic Tier adventure path module from Wizards of the Coast. It follows on from E1: Death’s Reach which I reviewed a few months ago here, and leads into E3: Prince of Undeath (a review I have already written that I’ll post in a few weeks time).

Bruce Cordell is back from the first (E series) module and is here joined by Chris Tulach (whose work I’m not that familiar with, but I know he does a lot of DDi material for Dragon Magazine).

Note: This is not a playtest review.

First Impressions

The cover is notably better than E1 Death’s Reach, featuring as it does characters from the actual module itself, in this case centreing the main villain Doresain. But the cover still does not say “Epic” to me, let alone scream “EPIC!!” as epic should do.

The interior format is typical WotC fare, slipcase cover with two adventure booklets (one 32 page, the other 64 page) and a poster sized double-sided map. Production values are up to their usual high standards, although the lack of artwork in the larger adventure booklet really makes reading it a bit more chore than fun.

The story basically involves the heroes on the trail of Orcus’ followers (who are up to no good as you might expect) embroiled in a plot involving the ancient primordial Timesus. So its a little bit railroaded, with the heroes really only able to ‘hit their marks’ rather than directly influence events. Although you could argue the White Kingdom section could conceivably work as a sandbox area given a bit of effort (the adventure itself handwaves away the possibility of a direct assault on Doresain’s Palace, saying: “the army of ghouls and other flesh-eaters would rise up to stop them”). Instead they have to sneak in through the back door and defeat Doresain.

The adventure itself takes place over four locations:

• Sigil (6 Encounters): The famous ‘City of Doors’ where followers of Orcus smuggled a mysterious cargo.
• The Embassy of Ghouls (7 Encounters): Headquarters for a secret slavery operation that funnels slaves into the White Kingdom.
• The White Kingdom (8 Encounters): Part of Orcus’ Abyssal layer ruled by Doresain the King of Ghouls.
• Doresain’s Palace (9 Encounters): With Outer Palace and Inner Fane areas.

The Good

1. Potential: The more I think about the White Kingdom itself, the more potential I see for some great adventuring. Maybe the lake of black blood springs from a wound inflicted on Gorgimrith and stopping the wound could make the living mountain attack Doresain’s forces? Maybe Doresain is trying to create an army of Bone Golems from the Marrow Mounds? Taking a leaf from Savage Tide, what if the heroes had to strike a deal with enemies of Orcus (Yeenoghu would have been perfect for this given his past with Doresain) to draw away the bulk of his forces allowing them enough time to assault the Palace directly.
2. Production Values: You can criticise WotC for many things but they get all the basics right and even though I mentioned on a recent forum thread I’d love to see them do some handdrawn maps, in all fairness the Dungeon Tile maps are excellent. Every encounter has the big double page adventure format (even though I would argue half the encounters really don’t need it).

The Bad

1. Ghouls: Okay the module is called Kingdom of the Ghouls and features the King of the Ghouls, so it was probably going to involve ghouls in some manner. Yet its the way ghouls are incorporated into the module that just annoys me because it touches on one of the worst aspects of 4E design, a lack of progress felt by the players because the SAME monsters just scale with the PCs. You can fight Ghouls at Heroic Tier, Abyssal Ghouls at Paragon Tier and here we have some Epic Tier Ghouls. Why are these ghouls epic tier at all? Who knows…actually we do know, because the designers needed some to fill the void. Epic tier monsters should be epic in and of their own merits, either because they are that powerful, or because their history and origins warrant it. Here there is none of that, simply ghouls that are epic because the designers wanted them to be, theres no attempt at any justification.
2. Lack of Challenge: This may well be the easiest adventure ever. Looking over it, the encounter levels for the individual encounters are shockingly low for an epic tier module – and thats even before taking into consideration that the monsters are all Pre-Monster Manual 3 damage upgrades. Here are the encounter ratings based on the Level the PCs would be at the time: +1, -1, +0, +1, +1, +1, +0, -2, +1…+0, -2, -1, +0, +1, -1, +0, +1, +0, +0…-1, -1, +0, +0, +1, +0, -1, +1, -1, +1. Its a total and utter walk in the park, there are no encounters greater than EL +1…at epic level thats like just letting the PCs win without a fight. If you are considering running this you may want to seriously think about beefing up the encounters quite a bit.
3. Running Out of Epic Monsters: The lack of breadth in epic content within the Monster Manual is pretty obvious when they throw together a Crownwing, Storm Gorgon and Dragonborn Champion into an encounter simply because they are of the appropriate level. Whats worse is that they don’t even bother to customise the monsters to make them fit in (Skullwings? Nightmare Gorgon ridden by Ghostly Dragonborn Champion?). I mean how much cooler would these modules be if every single monster was customised (as opposed to virtually none)?
4. Verisimilitude: This adventure features 3 monsters of equal power to Doresain and 5 who are actually more powerful than him. Given that the PCs have to defeat these others to get to Doresain you would have thought he might have decided to beef up his personal security quite a bit. In fact theres no real sense that his Palace would be equipped to defend against an armed force and no one in the Palace really seems to take much notice of the heroes breaking in and making a mess of the place.

Conclusion

Individual parts are good (even if rarely what you would call epic) but the package as a whole disappoints. The basic impression you get from it is that it has no soul, no charm, no character. There are some interesting ideas (Gorgimroth the Mountain), a few worthwhile monsters (like Nightbringer the weapon) and a handful of evocative encounters (the Court of Teeth for instance). But overall its all a bit bare boned.

What I think WotC need to do is forget about the Dungeon Crawl approach and string together some mini-sandbox locations. Map out each of these and explain the possible guard and random encounters. Then concentrate on maybe 3-4 important scripted encounters for each of these major areas. This would cut the number of scripted combat encounters by a half, giving you more time to customise them and make them special.

Overall 5 (out of 10)

Chatting with people on the various forums I get the impression many are disillusioned with the whole concept of what epic really entails. This is further compounded by the official epic tier material from Wizards of the Coast which is, to date, underwhelming in both quality and quantity.

So how do you make an epic campaign feel EPIC!?

The Ten Commandments of Epic

The following is a list of ten things in my opinion a truly EPIC campaign should feature. Incidently the 4th Edition ‘E’ series of adventure modules rates a 0 out of 10 on this checklist.

1. Thou shalt feature Big Battles

In the Heroic tier you have skirmishes with perhaps a few dozen minions.

In the Paragon tier you should be waging civil wars with thousands on each side.

In the Epic tier you should be facing world wars with lone demigods battling armies numbering in the millions, planar invasions where hordes of demons and legions of devils take the field, great flying castles act like aircraft carriers while thousands of dragons dogfight around them threatening to blot out the sun.

Here’s the thing, Lord of the Rings is an epic saga, but NOT an example of the Epic Tier in action, more like mid-paragon tier. So whats an example of an epic TIER storyline…probably something along the lines of the Mahabarata where armies of millions clash with weapons of atomic power and superhero-esque demigods battle with massive cyborg beasts.

Problem

There are no official rules for staging big battles in 4th Edition. Okay so how can you run battles with hundreds let alone thousands or millions, you won’t have enough miniatures for that, and running hundreds of NPCs will take forever.

Solution

Before we had miniatures we used to play with this thing called an IMAGINATION. So don’t worry about needing miniatures all the time.

Running hundreds, thousands or even millions of troops will be easy using UNIT combat. In simplified terms each unit is treated much like a swarm. Each factor of ten increases the Level of the unit by +6. Therefore if a lone Orc Soldier is Level 3, then a unit of 10 Orc Soldiers would be Level 9 and a unit of 100 would be Level 15 etc. If you have to represent 64 Orcs then use six units of 10 and 4 individual Orcs.

One of the great benefits of unit combat is that you can also use them as enemies for the PCs. That way you can have your 25th-level fighter take on an army of 10,000 Orcs singlehandedly!

I’ll have a slightly more detailed take on the Unit Rules in the very near future because they are a prominent part of my The Serpent Riders epic tier 4E adventure (the product coming out after the Vampire Bestiary).

2. Thou shalt make the game Challenging

To quote Mike Shea from his excellent Running Epic Tier D&D Games pdf:

Be Kind to them at Heroic

Be even-handed at Paragon

Be a bastard at Epic

Problem

Its far too easy for epic characters to steamroller your encounters, and while such characters should have their moments in the sun, you need to temper this with a short sharp reality check. If the PCs think they can just walk in to a god’s house and beat them up, then you simply are not giving NPCs the proper respect. Yes the PCs should save the day, but they should also be made aware of their limitations and that there are a lot of no go areas where they’ll just get killed. The PCs should almost never be able to beat a deity or demon prince  in their backyard. Too many guards, too many defenses, too prepared, too powerful…and if you can’t go through the guards and defenses you have to find a way to get around them.

In the Savage Tide adventure path from Paizo, the PCs face this exact problem. Demogorgon is simply too powerful to be directly beaten, but the PCs can find allies and artifacts to help them, while at the same time weakening Demogorgon both directly and indirectly by corrupting or killing his lieutenants. This is a much more satisfying way to handle a story than simply grinding until you are powerful enough to beat the boss.

Solution

My first suggestion would be to buy Mike Shea’s previously mentioned awesome pdf.

But a quick idea might well be to borrow from the Savage Tide example with regards weakening the BBEG. Set the BBEG at the theoretical limit of what the PCs could possible defeat (probably about an encounter level of +7  or thereabouts at the epic tier). But then allow the PCs to undertake various missions whereby success will either directly or indirectly weaken the BBEG (by temporarily reducing them by -1 Level per success). Of course success may not be guaranteed in these missions.

Another idea might be to never let the PCs level up until after the adventure. That would make something like E3: Prince of Undeath a decent challenge.

3. Thou shalt embrace Collateral Damage

In the Heroic tier a village might get burnt down by raiders.

In the Paragon tier a town might get razed to the ground by an army.

In the Epic tier deities could be responsible for cities, getting magically ‘nuked’, countries wiped off the map overnight, empires destroyed, reshaping of the continents, pandemics, ice ages, asteroid impacts, planetary axis shifts, world wars and every other doomsday scenario you can imagine.

Problem

Many DMs don’t like to destroy large swathes of the campaign world. Maybe they have put too much work into designing areas and NPCs that the thought of destroying them is too much to bear.

If you cannot bear the thought of your lovely campaign world getting FUBAR’ed then simply don’t play an epic campaign because you will be depriving the game of one of the fundamental cornerstones of epicness: the ramifications upon the setting, the overturning of the status quo, the ushering in of new era’s and epochs. One thing that makes epic games stand out is the ability for the PCs actions and inactions to shape the world around them.

Solution

So don’t shy away from big things happening to the campaign world, embrace it.

Of course you then have to make those big things happen in the first place and there are not really any great rules for that at the moment. Rituals could cover it but then how do you balance them, how can you create something like the Rain of Colourless Fire or the Invoked Devastation (from Oeridian history) or the Mythal from the Forgotten Realms past. Thats something beyond the scope of this article to cover, I’ll explore further in the Immortals Handbook and hopefully future articles here on this website.

However, as a quick rule of thumb (and this is currently untested) it might be possible to introduce Ritual Templates that increase the scale of a spell or ritual’s effect. For instance you could apply the Country Scale Template to the Animate Dead ritual and animate all corpses in the entire country, creating an army of undead. 

4. Thou shalt include Contrasting Cut Scenes

In the Epic tier the heroes try to save the world from the grip of Orcus’ terrible ritual animating all the dead in the world.

…at the same time…in the Paragon tier the henchmen of the heroes defend the castle from being attacked by a Dracolich.

…while thats going on…in the Heroic tier, NPCs (e.g. Karl the Blacksmith or the Landlord of the Rosy Dog Tavern) the heroes met early in their careers are defending their homes against a seemingly endless horde of zombies.

Cut scenes, as an idea, would work with any tier of play. The specific goal here though, is to illustrate the fundamental differences between the mundane and the epic, by specifically having cut scenes designed for different tiers.

Problem

When everything is BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST! Then its easy to lose track of just how momentous the events have just become. When all around you the dials have been turned up to eleven its easy for the EPIC to become the norm, which means that too much epic becomes mundane, which is why you need a little contrast, every now and again. 

Solution

So what is ‘contrast’ in this context? Basically you need to give your PCs a reminder every now and again of just how far removed the epic is from the mundane, by making them play the lower levels again. However, packing up the epic game would be self-defeating (since we want to run a cool epic campaign). So you have to weave this scene jump into the epic campaign storyline.

The easy way to do this is by having the PCs play as either their henchmen (or some other servants) or even better, as their worshippers. However, this isn’t the only way to achieve this: perhaps the PCs have been weakened by some epic ritual, or perhaps the bad guy has went back in time and the PCs have to defeat him as they were back then when they were less powerful.

The point is, occasionally you want PCs to get a taste of how things were in the lower tiers of play and the best way to approach this is by tying it into the current story. This not only has the benefit of making the epic bits seem bigger, but it also keeps the PCs guessing whats going to happen next and even allows you to juggle multiple plots at the same time.

In the movies and television they do this all the time, for instance in Return of the Jedi you have Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader. Then the scene changes to show Han Solo lead the Rebels on Endor to destroy the shield generator. Then the scene jumps again to show Lando in the Millenium Falcon in a big space battle. Back and forth the scene changes heightening the tension.

In the same way when your epic PCs are taking on Orcus in his throne room, perhaps the world is being overrun with undead and the PCs henchmen back home are fighting a losing battle against hopeless odds. When the PCs get Orcus bloodied, change the scene to show the henchmen battling against the undead swarming over the castle and then have the PCs play as their own henchmen in that scene, end the encounter with something even worse coming for them (a Dracolich maybe) and then cut back to the PCs. If they don’t finish Orcus off soon everyone back home is done for.

5. Thou shalt Explore the Unexplored

In the Heroic tier, characters don’t stray too far from home; the civilised areas with maybe some danger lurking at locations on the fringes of society.

In the Paragon tier, the heroes travel to the most dangerous and remote parts of their world; places where even the environments themselves are hostile (the underdark, frozen wastelands, deserts, volcanic regions, underwater cities etc.).

In the Epic tier players get to visit the planes: the vibrant explosion of life that is the Feywild, the enervating dismal ruins of the Shadowfell, the Astral Plane – palaces and graveyards of the gods, the Elemental Chaos the unbridled fury of the elements unchecked and the twisted madness of the Far Realm.

Problem

Now while you can probably visit the planes at the Paragon or even Heroic tiers, to do so somewhat cheapens the planes in my opinion, removing the impact of these wondrous places. I know some of you probably played Planescape back in 2nd Edition and explored the planes with relative impunity at 1st-level. Well basically I am here to tell you that Planescape got it all wrong. Its ‘comfy slippers’ approach let you not only traverse the planes at 1st-level, but you could actually live there amongst the demons, devils and deities. But when demons and gods are commonplace, what do you do and where do you go for an encore? While the idea behind Planescape was a good marketing ploy (lets get to the kewl stuff immediately) to sell a multitude of boxed sets, it was a flawed idea as regards selling Dungeons and Dragons as a whole. The game should embrace the contrasts each tier brings, not seek to blend everything into one homogenized soup.

Solution

So the suggestion here is don’t be too quick to rush players into the planes at the lower tiers, keep something unique for each tier of play, making it stand out more.

In the Immortal tier…well you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you.

6. Thou shalt eradicate the idea of Fixed Level Encounters

Technically this commandment works well at any tier of play, but its probably more important for the higher tiers were challenging the PCs becomes increasingly difficult.

Problem

The game sacrifices too much verisimilitude to throw fixed level encounters at the PCs in easy to handle portions. What this does is act as a security blanket to PCs who know that they should be able to beat any given encounter the DM throws at them, so they can just run amok in Orcus’ backyard with impunity, lets go there, lets take a rest here. Retreat is no longer an option simply because its no longer necessary for PCs to flee the field.

Solution

You need to mechanically remove the security blanket of fixed level encounters.

Firstly, design defended areas attacked/infiltrated by the PCs as if they are a legitimate military base. Instigate a ‘realm wide’ Defcon level for enemy territories.

• Defcon 5: Normal Readiness
• Defcon 4: Possible Threat Detected, increase all Encounters by +1, send a patrol to investigate the disturbance
• Defcon 3: Definite Threat Detected, increase all Encounters by +2, activate security protocols in that area (special traps/hazards), send elite guard units to mop up survivors
• Defcon 2: Security Compromised, increase all Encounters by +3, we’re gonna need the A-team on this one
• Defcon 1: Gentlemen we are under attack, increase all encounters by +4, get Orcus on the crystal ball, he’s going to want to handle this himself

This way, the actions of the PCs have consequences. The PCs trigger the higher alert status by getting involved in fights (encounters) and allowing the alarm to be raised. Every major area will have three grades of response team:

1. Standard Guard Patrol = Encounter Level about the same as the PCs
2. Elite Heavy Guard Patrol (by ‘Elite’ I don’t mean necessarily Elite rank – just to clarify) = Encounter Level +1 to +3
3. Special Forces Strike Team (named NPCs, or unique monsters) = Encounter Level +4 to +6

7. Thou shalt have Monsters Much Bigger Than Gargantuan

In the heroic tier you face ogres twice the height of a normal man.

In the paragon tier the heroes battle dragons as big as a house.

In the epic tier you can face monsters about 10 feet taller than the paragon tier…I mean, really? Whats epic about that?

Problem

Forget what the official books say, I’m here to tell you that (Ancient) Dragons are not proper Epic Tier opponents, that even the Tarrasque is not an Epic Tier monster…yes you heard me THE TARRASQUE IS NOT AN EPIC TIER MONSTER!! They should all be Paragon Tier…of course its too late for me to rewrite all the 4E monster books, but its important to understand why I am making such a claim in the first place. A monster, in particular a solo monster (with no army to back it up) should be a threat (roughly) as follows:

• Levels 1-5 = Village Threat
• Levels 6-10 = Town Threat
• Levels 11-15 = City Threat
• Levels 16-20 = Country Threat
• Levels 21-25 = Continental Threat
• Levels 26-30 = World Threat

Now an ancient dragon is certainly a threat to a city and probably just about a threat to a country. The Tarrasque is probably a good threat for a small country. Now you can argue that “Hey the ancient red dragon and the Tarrasque are Level 30 so they must be epic threats Krusty”. But why are they Level 30, and what does Level 30 itself mean? If the epic tier is about saving the world, then epic tier monsters should be capable of placing that world in jeopardy, not just mathematically placed at that level to challenge heroes of that level. A dragon’s fiery breath might burn down a few buildings, the Tarrasque might eat a few hundred people while the rest scatter and hide but so might a large roving warband of orcs. The epic tier should be about taking on a dragonflight of thousands of dragons, or battling intelligent Tarrasque armed with futuristic weaponry (like Ma-Yuan the godslayer).

Instead what we have is a plethora of monsters who are epic simply because the rules say they are supposed to be epic, rather than epic because of their innate power and ability.

Of course you can have solo monsters who are the leaders of vast armies (like Demon Princes and Deities) who may not necessarily need to have personal power capable of destroying a world because they can threaten it with their armies. But even these mighty beings should have some indirect way of threatening the planet, perhaps Orcus can perform ancient rituals that cause all the dead to rise up on a planet and attack the living?

Solution

But the point is you need to massively up the scale of the monsters in the epic tier, and I have just the set of tools for the job, called Super-Solo Monsters, a set of quick and simple rules for creating truly enormous boss monsters OF ANY SIZE. I’ll have those rules on this website hopefully before the end of May.

How big can the monsters get? There is no limit, but check out this fun clip from a video game in the works called Asura’s Wrath. Now that’s EPIC…and something I’d expect to see PCs battling about Level 29-30.

In the Epic tier you can battle golems the size of castles, primordials the size of mountains and dragons as big as planets…that sounds slightly more epic to me than monsters a few feet taller than the last tier.

In the Immortal tier…don’t even get me started…just go watch Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and get that Armour ready.

8. Thou shalt embrace Politics

In the Heroic tier you battle monsters and gain treasure.

In the Paragon tier you battle different monsters and gain more treasure.

In the Epic tier you do battle with really powerful monsters and gain vast treasures worth a king’s ransom.

Problem

Okay the above is a simplification of the game itself and a generalisation that most campaigns fall into a rut of killing things and taking their stuff (which I know isn’t the case for every campaign, so I apologise to those people). But its worth pointing out that gaming at each tier means more or less the exact same thing, only the monsters are more powerful and the treasure is amplified.

Solution

The solution to this problem is to introduce politics. Now I fully admit to being a predominantly tactical gamer (thats the side of things I enjoy most). But in our epic campaign there was a lot of politics and I have to admit, I loved it. Some problems you just can solve with your fists (or swords) and for everything else there’s politics.

I am sure there is probably better advice than I could muster on how to introduce a political element to Dungeons and Dragons. But I think the first step is to allow PCs to run their own stronghold (sometime during the Paragon Tier). This was something the game always advocated back in Oth/1st Edition but it seems to have been largely ignored by recent designers which is a great shame.  

9. With great power comes great Responsibility*

*Yes I know you used that quote last week S’mon and I passed the XP points on to Stan Lee. :-p

In the Heroic tier you are relatively unknown and few have heard of your deeds.

In the Paragon tier you are respected (or feared – for villainous types) at a national level, when the king requires champions your name is one of those spoken.

In the Epic tier you are a superstar, adored (or despised – for villainous types) across the known world.

Problem

If the PC’s just exist in a vacuum where their actions or inactions simply have no consequences beyond their character sheets then you are missing probably the epic game’s greatest USP (Unique Selling Point) – the vast gravitas of events. But for that self same gravitas to impact the players they have to care what happens to NPCs.

Now its possible that some players may care about the fate of NPC henchmen or long time allies…but lets be honest, most won’t.

Solution

So how do you get players to care what happens to the millions of people Orcus just killed? Simple…you make PC’s power directly dependent upon ‘the little people’ by replacing experience points with worship points.

I introduced this idea back in 3rd Edition with the Immortals Handbook: Ascension. In that book the more worshippers you garnered, the greater your divine rank (which back then was a template). The key aspect of this approach is that the number of worshippers could go up or down depending upon the success or failure of certain events. The beauty of this mechanic is that the DM can then challenge the PCs indirectly with attacks upon their worshippers. Trust me, when power is directly linked to worshippers, the players WILL care about the well-being of the little people.

Now the Immortals Handbook: Ascension book wasn’t fantastic by my own admission (you can read my thoughts on that here). But I now understand all its flaws and I will be starting a 4th Edition version of those ideas in a few months time. One of the pitfalls of Ascension 3E was that I didn’t make the worship angle central enough, which meant most people didn’t bother with it (and maybe it wasn’t well enough explained to begin with). In the days of 1st/2nd Edition we used a similar method but the lesson I forgot was that beyond a certain point (roughly 16-20th-level depending on class) PC levels were almost meaningless in 1st/2nd Edition. This meant that worshippers were far more important than XP in terms of powering up a character. Yes they were more trouble to gain and maintain but the benefits were ultimately worth it.  But I think in 3E it was not worth the bother when you could just use one of the other paths (Power or Resonance rather than Glory) to gain divinity and so most people did just that and ignored the worship feature which is (IMO) the most important feature to have in an epic/immortal game. Added to which character levelling in 3E still meant a hefty increase in power.

In the 4th Edition Immortals Handbook I am leaning towards the idea of integrating the Worship Points rules at Level 21 with a probable suggestion that campaigns abandon the EXP rules (for leveling at least) altogether. But thats still work in progress so its not set in stone.

A word regarding Commandments #8 and #9…

To put these paradigm shifts into the context of the different tiers:

• Heroic Tier: Adventuring
• Paragon Tier: Adventuring + Politics (National level: Running your own Stronghold)
• Epic Tier: Adventuring + Politics (Global Level: Running your own Country/Empire) + Worship (Pre-Divine Ascension)
• Immortal Tier: Adventuring + Politics (Planar Level: Running your own Religion) + Worship (Post-Divine Ascension) + Realm/Plane Building

10. Thy Weapons shalt be outrageous

In the Heroic tier you use the best weapons you can find.

In the Paragon tier you are equipped with the best magic weapons money can buy.

In the Epic Tier, destiny draws you to artifacts of power fated to become your legendary signature weapon (or weapons).

Problem

There is no problem as such here, consider this a style thing: “Epic eye for the mundane guy” or something like that.

Solution

Its an unwritten law of epic…probably. Either in terms of design (e.g. your sword has three blades and they shoot out), function (e.g. when you throw the weapon it comes back you you) or scale (e.g. that sword is WAY too big for a normal person to wield), epic weapons simply need to be improbably outrageous.

Examples of Epic weapons include:

• The Glaive from the Krull movie
• The Gunswords from Final Fantasy VIII
• Thor’s hammer
• The sword from the movie “The Sword and the Sorceror”
• Lightsabres
• Kratos’ Blades of Chaos from the God of War videogame
• The Flying Guillotine from movies such as One-Armed Boxer II
• The Sword of the Moon and the Spear of the Sun in Slaine.

My ultimate plan is to have new races in the Immortals Handbook (both Epic tier and Immortal tier) and each of these races will have its own signature weapon type. For instance the Sirian race from the Far Realm will wield crystalline items and weapons made from Ioun Stones, while the Devoids from the Dimension of Death will have items and weapons made from Liches.

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed the article and get to ask yourself how many of the above boxes does your own epic campaign tick. If you have any feedback at all feel free to post those comments below.

Note: This is not a play test review.

First Impressions

This is a fan made adventure and doesn’t really have a lot of eye-candy by way of illustrations or layout. However, don’t let that put you off, plus its free so give it a try. I had heard some good reports and decided to check it out, after reading through it I was so impressed I donated some money to the designers.

The Good

1. Diversity: I own quite a few 4th Edition adventures (all official WotC adventure path modules plus Revenge of the Giants, some adventures from Goodman games), and while I knew 4th Edition was combat centric, it took Revenge of the Iron Lich to remind me that the game is not just about combat. Which, you can easily be tricked into thinking by reading most existing 4th Edition adventures. Here, combat is present, but it’s not omnipresent. The adventure does feature combat encounters, but it also features encounters based around: Traps; Exploration and Puzzles. What this does is not only break up the combat sections (giving them greater gravitas when they do occur), but it also keeps players guessing as regard whats going to happen next. This greater diversity allowed the designer to place more emphasis on non-combat sections and I really think the adventure as a whole benefits from this.
2. Originality: Where to start, this adventure is not afraid to try new ideas and add new features to what has become a somewhat formulaic and stale approach to designing adventures. Yes the official adventure path series has some decent encounters but they seem hamstrung by convention, not so here. Some of the features I enjoyed include: Time Limit; Encounter Symbols; Item, Rumour and Wraith Cards; a Points Scoring System; Taunts listed in the Monster Stat-blocks and some really imaginatively designed encounters and monsters.
3. Uncompromising: While I haven’t played this module yet, it looks like a pretty stiff challenge. The monsters, all of which are ‘homebrew’ creations (even if their origins are familiar) are built to be deadly (one in particular, a 4-armed iron golem soulgrinder, is notably overpowered for its level…on paper at least, so I would be careful with that encounter). However, the module is meant to be uncompromising, certainly owing its inspiration to the original Tomb of Horrors module from what I can see. In fact it goes so far as to outright warn you that many encounters are deadly, a few may result in total party kills and the ending is even more dangerous than that! Great stuff for anyone who likes a challenge.

The Bad

1. Lack of Art: Something of a nitpick, since this is a free adventure. There is no real interior art to speak of (I think there is one diagram of a trap that’s illustrated) and as an overall package that does hurt it. But its a minor disappointment. Personally I’d love to see them get an artist and release this as a $5 pdf.

Conclusion

If you are running a paragon tier campaign for 4th edition I highly recommend checking this out. If you just want to run a deadly one-shot adventure module get this. If you want to see how to design a good adventure, again get this. In fact I can’t think of any reason why a DM would not want to get this.

Overall 9 (out of 10)

This is a new, non-edition specific rule mechanic I have added to the Vampire Bestiary (though I removed it from the previews so far). The basic idea stemmed from an online conversation I had about a year ago regarding published (4E) adventures. The discussion was specifically about how it appeared that the choices you make in one encounter, don’t overtly impact subsequent encounters.

I sort of got thinking that an easy way to change that would be to have monsters who run away or escape, show up again in a later encounter.

Morale in RPGs

There are four basic types of morale.

• Shaky: Cowardly figures who will run away (if possible), or surrender (if escape is impossible) when outnumbered. e.g. Peasant
• Typical: Will try to run away or surrender if all allies are either dead or otherwise incapacitated. e.g. Town Guard
• High: Someone willing to fight to the death. e.g. Elite Soldier
• Stoic: Not only will they fight to the death, but when they are the last man standing amongst their allies they receive a bonus depending on their role. e.g. Hero

Last Man Standing

The last man standing gains one of the following bonuses.

• Artillery: +5 Bonus to Attacks until the end of the encounter
• Brute: Increase damage by 50% until the end of the encounter
• Controller: Size of Area Effect attacks doubles until the end of the encounter
• Lurker: With Combat Advantage, all hits become Critical Hits until the end of the encounter
• Skirmisher: Can make an additional Standard Action each round until the end of the encounter (4E); double the number of actions until the end of the encounter (3E)
• Soldier: +5 Bonus to AC/Defenses/Saves until the end of the encounter

Morale Boost

The presence of a leader means that, at least while the leader is alive and conscious, all allies who can see and hear him will have the same Morale rating as the leader.

Fear

Certain spells/spell-like effects or the frightening presence of certain monsters could potentially lower the morale of a NPC/Monster.

Morale and Monster Rank

• Elite Rank: Treat an elite rank NPC/Monster as two creatures for the purposes of morale. When bloodied, treat them as one creature.
• Solo Rank: Treat a solo rank NPC/Monster as four creatures for the purposes of morale. Each time they lose 25% of their hit points treat them as one creature less. Solo rank creatures should never have Shaky morale.

Benefits of the Morale mechanic

• Consequences of Actions: The first benefit of this system is to add causality to encounters. This ’cause an effect’ will manifest in the form of monsters escaping (or being let go) in one encounter, returning in a subsequent encounter. For instance a goblin might go and warn the rest of the tribe that adventurers are heading this way. Causing them to be alerted, better prepared and have at least one extra goblin (the one that got away to warn them) in the group. Another example could be that the PCs freed a wolf from a pit trap, in a later encounter, that wolf might return to help the PCs. So the consequences don’t always have to be negatives. Also the situation could spark its own encounters. What if a slaver surrenders to the party, saying he’ll testify against his organisation, they have to escort him back to the constable’s for questioning. Along the way, slaver’s might attempt to rescue or slay their man.
• Roleplaying: While cutting down enemies in the heat of battle is one thing. What about killing an enemy that has surrendered to you or been captured? These situations could add a whole new opportunity for drama and character development. Killing someone in cold blood, someone pleading their case, telling you they have a family, begging for their lives or stoically resigning themselves to their fate will give characters another dimension. Inter-party relationships like how does the Paladin feel about the party Thief’s murder of someone in their custody. I just think theres a wealth of potential stemming from this simple mechanic.
• Verisimilitude: I just don’t think a bunch of goblins, kobolds or peasants would fight to the death, especially not when outnumbered In contrast, what about the potential for a true hero (even amongst villains), someone courageous enough to defend his home or ‘the bridge’ against all odds.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, whether you use the idea or not.

There have been two official takes on Orcus in 4th Edition (Monster Manual and E3: Prince of Undeath), but none of them created truly satisfying opponents. So I thought I would throw my proverbial hat into the ring and see what I could come up with. It was also an excuse to put my basic tips on solo monster design into action.

But all this begs the question, what is Orcus? Or to be more specific, what are the features and powers intrinsic to Orcus that we can use to create our version.

Orcus (1st Edition AD&D)

While I know he featured in earlier products, Orcus really came to prominence in the 1st Edition Monster Manual (which was actually the first ever D&D book I ever bought, back in 1984). He later returned in the Bloodstone series of Modules as the main antagonist (I love those adventures, not because they were great, far from it, just because they tried to cover the levels we were playing at). Early incarnations of Orcus were a bit low on hit points. I remember chatting to Gary Gygax about this and he remarked that at the time he was kicked out of TSR he was actually planning a book that revised all the Demon Lords, Archdukes and so forth giving them all d12′s for Hit Dice and max hit points per die. Sadly that book never came to fruition. Anyway, the key features of his 1st Edition incarnations are:

• Punch/Slap: Noted that even a slap from Orcus was incredibly powerful. With my Orcus starting with the Wand and the Sword, his Punch would probably never get used. To counter that my initial idea was to have the Orcusword start to ‘Dance’ when Orcus is Bloodied. That frees up his hand for a Punch, and he also gains a Slap attack as a Triggered Action. I left in the Punch, but didn’t see any great benefit to keeping the Slap, since his Tail attack did much the same thing only better.
• Wand of Death (aka. The Wand of Orcus): The classic instrument of death that killed those it touched…at least those below a certain measure of power. I knew I wanted to keep the fatality for the Final Word power, so I decided that the Wand itself would instead deal permanent damage AND have the ability to create/summon undead on a critical hit. I did like the idea of the Wand turning into a glowing green whip with a “Soul Stealer” ability to pull a target’s soul from their body (losing Encounter and Daily powers in the process), but it was dropped from the final cut.
• Tail Attack: Poison dealing attack that was fast. Making it an easy fit for a Triggered Action.
• Summon Undead: I folded this power into the Wand of Orcus, so that he summons an undead servant from tearing off part of the target’s soul when he crits with the Wand. One of the monsters from E3: Prince of Undeath seemed perfect for this role.
• Gate Demons: It was pure coincidence that my own illustration of Orcus, done back in 2006 for the Immortals Handbook: Ascension, had him creating these magical pits with wraith-like monsters emerging from them. With 4E now allowing undead demons, I was able to choose another monster from the Prince of Undeath adventure, this time a minion, that seemed to fit perfectly.
• The Orcusword: Definately the attack that gave me the most consternation (probably because its such an open book). I didn’t want to go with the lightning of the Balor’s sword (though I initially considered lightning + necrotic). I also had several ideas additional features of the sword: the ability to fight of its own accord and ‘dance’ when Orcus is bloodied and a “Crack of Doom” power that deals damage like a Wall attack but opens a great fiery chasm.

Orcus (2nd Edition D&D)

Orcus gets himself killed at the end of the Bloodstone series and the designers of 2nd Edition decided to let that death stand as edition canon. Of course then they decided to resurrect him from the dead in the Dead Gods supermodule. Initially he comes back and has access to magic called the Final Word which can even kill gods.

• Final Word: I decided that Orcus would still retain a fraction of this power. I made it a ranged attack (as opposed to Touch of Death) so that  it also gives Orcus the ability to deal with troublesome enemies too cowardly to face him in melee.

Orcus (3rd Edition D&D)

Orcus became one of the central bad guys of D&D again though for some inexplicable reason he now has completely red skin (where previously he had pale white skin like a blood drained corpse) and is well toned (where before he was fat).

•  Gore: The gore attack sort of made sense while he was only Large size, but at Gargantuan size its just impractical. Instead I replaced it with a stomp attack, so that he can still charge around the battlefield.

Orcus (4th Edition)

In a clever move, WotC made Orcus THE poster boy for D&D villainy, he’s a cool villain so why not. He now also doubled in height to gargantuan (which wasn’t as completely out of the blue as you might think since he was bigger (than his usual 15 feet) in the Throne of Bloodstone module when encountered on his home plane. Presumably this was done to make him seem more impressive when standing next to the ‘Balrog-ified’ Balor who was now also bigger than before. Orcus gained two new features in 4th Edition, his Aura of Death and a Necrotic Pulse. With several other features being folded into new or similar powers.

• Aura of Death: Kept this but massively upped the damage.
• Necrotic Pulse: I never really liked this power, far too vanilla. So it morphed into the “Howl of Anguish”, Triggered Action
• Shard of Evil: Too adventure specific. I decided not to feature this plot device.

So there you have the key elements of Orcus. Yes he did also have a bunch of spell-like abilities back in the day, yes he did get some unique spells (for his cult) back in the Book of Vile Darkness, as well as start wearing that cool looking golden gauntlet. But I was already up to my neck in powers so a lot of stuff had to get cut.

Orcus (Krust Edition)

I couldn’t resist not adding a few ideas  of my own into the mix.

• Curse of Brittle Bones: Inspired by the Mighty Thor story where the Death Goddess Hela curses Thor. This also gave me a chance to introduce my new Fragile condition.
• Dark Prayer: Triggered Action (Encounter: Triggered when Orcus is reduced to 25% Hit Points), Orcus buries the Orcusword in the ground, descends on one knee and unleashes all his dark power in one necromantic ritual, A fortitude attack, where every enemy on the battlefield takes damage equal to their bloodied value, Half on a Miss. I’m wondering if anyone killed by the attack becomes one of the undead (same as those created by the Wand on a crit).
• Wing Block: Inspired by the cartoon Batfink. Basically a limited (2) use ‘get out of jail free card’ for Orcus. Allowing him to escape from especially damaging attacks.
• Wraith Armour: Okay, not that happy with how this turned out, but I just thought ‘stop stalling and get it out there’.

Here is a list of ideas for powers I dropped from the final version:

• Crack of Doom: Standard Action (Recharge 5 6), Orcus slashes his sword into the ground, causing the floor to explode (5d10 + 25; half on a miss) across a 4 wide; 30 long ‘wall’ that creates a zone lasting to the end of the encounter.
• Dance of Death: Triggered Action (Encounter: Triggered when Orcus is Bloodied), The Orcusword fights under its own power. It can move anywhere on the battlefield.
• Death From Above: Move Action (Recharge 5 6), Orcus takes to the skies (teleporting outside the ceiling if need be), then crashes back down to the ground creating a mighty shockwave. Close Burst 10; 5d10 + 25 Thunder damage and targets are knocked prone. Half damage on a miss.
• Slap: Triggered Action (At Will), Anyone attacking him gets a slap, 3d10 + 15 damage and the target is slid 10 squares.
• Soul Stealer: Standard Action (Recharge 5 6), The Wand becomes a glowing green whip, snaring the targets soul. Melee 10, 6d10 + 30 permanent damage and the target is unable to use Encounter or Daily powers (save ends).

…Last Word

I hope you enjoy my take on Orcus, either way let me know what you think. Yes, I know the write up is more spartan than I’d have in a publication, there probably are a few typos and I still believe he could be improved with a tweak here and there (not happy with stomp or wraith armour at the moment and the bonus feature of the Dark Prayer power suggested above could be cool), but its not a bad first attempt. So without further ado (and as ever, click on the pages for a larger version)…

So before we solve the problems we need to understand them first.

Problems with Solo Monster Design

1. Too Boring: Many complain that solo monsters just are not as fun to fight, probably a combination of less fight synergy (the fewer the enemies) and less variety to attacks. Solutions: Ensure the solo monster has multiple attacking options so that, not only can it change tactics, but it can also keep the PCs guessing what comes next.
2. Too Easy: Primarily a problem at epic levels or with solo monsters that don’t follow the official design parameters. Solutions: Follow all the Top Tips below.
3. Forgettable: Solo monster carry the burden of being ‘End Bosses’ and often don’t live up to the hype. Solutions: Try something unique with each solo monster, even if that something bends the rules a bit or seemingly comes out of nowhere (while battling the solo monster, another monster comes out of nowhere and kills it).
4. Grinding: This occurs when the PCs are certain of victory but the monster still has lots of hit points remaining, leading to a laborious ‘going through the motions’ remainder of the battle. Solutions: Increase the damage output of the solo monster by approximately 50% when it becomes bloodied.
5. Initiative: More of an annoyance within bigger groups of players where it can take a relatively long time between the monster’s action. Solutions: Auras and Triggered Actions are a quick method of countering this problem. Or alternatively stagger the solo monster’s various actions on different initiative orders.
6. Too Static: Battles with solo monsters are inherently less dynamic than other encounters. Solutions: Giving a solo monster a Move Action can change this.

Top Tips for Solo Monster Design

1. Base Damage: Always make sure you set monster damage to the maximum suggested amount (per the Dungeon Master’s Guide errata from last July). This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how many times the official material doesn’t give monsters their due damage.
2. Bloodied/Death Throes: Either give the solo monster an Encounter power that activates when its bloodied, or when its killed. These one-shot powers should be very powerful.
3. Critical Hits: One of the ways to reduce grind is to give solo monsters bonus damage on critical hits. That bonus damage should be equal to the base damage dice of the attack. I also suggest increasing the Crit Range of the attack by 1 per additional tier (19-20: Paragon, 18-20: Epic, 17:-20: Immortal, etc.).
4. Extra Damage/Features: Its relatively rare (in 4E) for non-basic attacks to simply deal flat damage. Most attacks add a condition, ongoing damage or additional feature (slide the target etc.). Always treat these as EXTRA features. Don’t reduce the base damage just because the attack also stuns the PC.
5. Fatalities: Another option to consider is to give monsters attacks that deal damage ‘beyond damage’. Either attacks dealing an amount equal to the opponent’s bloodied value. Or attacks equal to the opponent’s total hit points. Heroic Tier = Bloodied Damage as an Encounter Power. Paragon Tier = Bloodied Damage as Recharging Standard Action. Epic Tier = Death as an Encounter Power. Immortal Tier = Death as a Recharging Standard Action. These attacks work best when gained upon the monster being bloodied.
6. Interactive Scenary/Terrain: A nice simple way in making encounters seem more unique without resorting to increasing the difficulty (as adding additional foes, hazards and traps would do). Interactive scenary is something both the PCs and the monster can utilise, for instance in a chamber full of stalagtites the PCs could damage one into falling upon the dragon, or the dragon could break one off and throw it at the PCs.
7. Ongoing Damage: Speaking of extra damage, when assigning ongoing damage use the following suggestions as your defaults: Heroic Tier = 5, Paragon Tier = 10, Epic Tier = 20, Immortal Tier = 40.
8. Overall Damage: A solo monster needs to average the equivalent damage of approx. 3 standard monsters. Either allow it multiple Standard Actions and/or give it Minor and Move Actions. Auras and Triggered Actions should not count towards this overall damage figure.
9. Powers: A solo monster needs options. As a rule of thumb, make sure a Heroic Tier solo monster has (at least) 8 powers (this total does not incorporate Traits other than Auras). Add one extra power per additional tier, and add one power if the monster is also a Leader. 
10. Reinforcements: One often quoted oxymoron is to “Never use solo monsters on their own”. However to avoid overtly unbalancing your encounter, use creatures worth no more than 19% of the solo monster’s Total XP. These are just enough to divert attention, but not significant enough to really sway the outcome of the battle (ie. they don’t change the Level of the Encounter).
11. Resilience: Solo monsters need to have ways to reduce the chances of getting stun-locked (or similar). One way to accomplish this is to give them a save (Immediate Reaction) as soon as they are affected by anything allowing a save. A second method is to give them powers they can sacrifice to remove afflicting conditions.
12. Situational Damage: One often overlooked design feature is to give monsters a bonus to damage when a certain favourable situation presents itself. The classic example is of course bonus Sneak Attack damage when you have Combat Advantage. But there are any number of possible situations such as: when a target is prone (or indeed any condition); when a target is bloodied; when the monster is bloodied; if the target is taking ongoing damage, etc.

Advanced Tips for Solo Monster Design

As noted at the top of the page, there are a few ideas I’ll be keeping from this article for the Vampire Bestiary…including:

1. Boss Phases: Breaking up the action.
2. Memorable Bosses: And now for something completely different.
3. Random Action Generator: Building monsters one power at a time.
4. Segmented Bosses: Very simple rules for fashioning multi-part monstrousities.
5. Super-Solos: Monsters bigger than Gargantuan: castle sized, mountain sized, planet sized, star sized, solar system sized, galaxy sized and universe sized etc…admittedly this section won’t be in this first volume of the Vampire Bestiary.
6. Weak Spots: Some very quick and dirty risk and reward style mechanics.

Cannibals

Okay, why cannibals, its a book about vampires, can’t you do anything right Krusty!? One of the ideas that seperates this bestiary from typical monster books is that its sort of homogenised in that it seemingly mixes disparate elements but blends or links them together to form a cohesive entity. If thats too cryptic an answer then the short answer is that each entry is linked to another entry with ultimately all links leading back to the core element of the book, vampires.

Secondly, although I am playing down the four adventure portions of this book (which are pretty brief; about 2 pages each) they do link together to form an adventure path of sorts. Thus again, tying all the elements of the book together. So you could start questing for a fabled artifact, braving cannibal infested jungles at the Mountain of the Cannibal God…only to have the artifact snatched away by assassins. Giving chase through a gauntlet of traps and monsters the heroes arrive at a town under the thrall of a deadly sect. But can they survive the Night of the Thuggee and trace this murderous evil back to its source. Only to find that the artifact was simply a wedding gift for an unholy union between Castle Dracula with the ‘devil bride of Dracula’ none other than the goddess Kali (or rather her Aspect Bhowanee), the marriage of misfortune to be performed at the Temple of Death.

As noted previously, all the pieces can be used seperately, but I had fun putting together a bit of a mini-adventure. An expansion of my old ‘Adventure Ideas’ section in the Epic Bestiary.

But anyway, back to cannibals. How do we get from vampire to cannibal. Well there are several links.

1. I knew I wanted Kali in the book, partly because she is a blood-drinking goddess, but also because she created the Dakini, dancing vampire witches (who themselves will feature in a later volume). Kali naturally linked to the Thuggee Cult. But also (for those who have seen the classic  Golden Voyage of Sinbad  movie), Kali is worshipped by primitive cannibals.
2. Many of the exotic vampires in the book (Jenglot, Chon-Chon, Impundulu among numerous others) are always mentioned in mythology in tandem with witchdoctors and shamen. Acting as pets, servants, spies, guardians and so forth. So I liked the idea of the idea using these two together.
3. Most vampires are relatively powerful creatures, but I wanted the book to run the full spectrum of levels. There was no real dominant type of vampire below the classic vampire (although as you will see in later volumes plenty above the classic vampire in power like the Nosferatu, Varcolac and Strigoi to name but a few). Certainly not enough to build a decent sized entry around. So the cannibals and cultist entries perfectly filled the gap, since both have associations with various vampires.
4. When I think of cannibals, I think of King Kong. So it would have been remiss of me not to have a type of Kong in the book, to give the cannibals another god to worship in case Kali wasn’t to your taste. So I went searching for a type of vampire Kong and found two. One of which being the Wendigo, the other I’ll have here in the final preview of the Vampire Bestiary in a week or so.

So about this preview. Basically just wanted to show some fantastic Peter Szmer interior art, the newer layout, the fact that even the entry for the cannibal has its own bag of surprises in that its not just cannibals. I’d estimate these are 99% complete pages. I may tweak a few more things like the tactics block for the Cannibal Impaler and I am still getting a little ‘noise’ on the Cannibal Witchdoctor illustration even after I had tidied it up (looks perfect in photoshop, but I’m getting some background noise when I place the jpeg file in the document and convert to pdf. As before, you can click on the page for a bigger version.

Feel free to let me know what you think, where I’m going wrong or what I’m doing right and I’ll be sure to take any feedback on board.

First Impressions: Gorgeous. Probably the best looking RPG book I have ever seen. Brilliant cover by Wayne Reynolds (one of my favourite artists) and the interior art is just absolutely stunning. I don’t know how they did it, but they have 36 different artists, yet you could be fooled into thinking the same artist did every interior piece…and they are all good, very good in fact. I have looked through the book several times and I don’t think I have spotted an illustration I didn’t think was great or better. Massive kudos to Sarah E. Robinson the Senior Art Director….amazing job.

The Good

1. The Art: Although I waxed lyrical about it in first impressions, its worth repeating, no other book (I have read) looks this good. Its almost impossible to single out a few ‘stand-out’ illustrations because they are all fantastic.
2. The Monsters: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Near-perfect mix of old and new monsters. I want to start somewhere and everywhere you look is another great entry, some with multiple monsters attached some as single entries. Its early days but some my favourites so far are: the Aeons (multiple entries); the Lhaksharut Inevitable; the Jabberwock; the Nightwalker Nightshade (yes they even made this look scary); Proteans (multiple entries); Qlippoth (also multiple entries); the Thrasfyr and Witchwyrd. They even have some old Epic Level Handbook favourites like the Mu-Spore, Winterwight and Worm That Walks (who looks even cooler than before).
3. Inspirational: I couldn’t help but notice that in the Daemon section of the book, they overtly mention that the Daemons are ruled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (no they aren’t detailed unfortunately) and subsequently that each of the Horsemen have their own personal type of lesser Daemon servant. Just to point out that I actually came up with this idea back in 2005 in my Epic Bestiary: Volume One. I then went on (a year or so later) to make a relatively lengthy post on Andy Collin’s personal forums about how the Horsemen would each have their own subservient daemons with descriptions and names (Astraloth, Dracoloth, Necroloth, Putriloth etc.)…Anyway, it gave me a chuckle reading over this entry in Paizo’s book. Someone at Paizo must be a fan. Sadly, Andy Collin’s forums are now defunct, or rather, converted into his twitter feed. But the miracle that is the internet has a funny way of saving things…have a read here and draw your own conclusions – personally I’m flattered.

The Bad

1. The Art: Hold on a minute Krusty, you have been going on and on about this book’s art, now you say thats a negative, please explain yourself? Okay, I will and let me preface this criticism as nitpicking. Several things have griped me about the admittedly amazing art. Firstly, VERY few of the pieces have any backgrounds (about 1%). Secondly all the pieces are the same size (quarter page). Lastly, VERY few of the pieces have any sense of scale (about 3%). Call me crazy but even brilliance can do with variety.
2. Low (Level) Ambitions: Another personal nitpick, the book tapers off into Challenge Rating 23 (The Jabberwock). This is an even smaller, and even more personal nitpick than the first negative point I raised. While on the face of it that might seem hypocritical as my own Vampire Bestiary only goes up to Level 15, its well documented that its the first of three volumes which top out at Level 45. With the Pathfinder Bestiary 2 its meant to cover all levels of the game, and in many ways it basically does. Paizo were never able to solve the problem with Epic Level 3rd Edition and given that such lofty levels are only 5% (or thereabouts) of (D&D) gamers why should they bother catering to such a small fraction of the audience…of course, I am writing this review and I happen to be a part of that small percentage so hence my raising the point. But I fully understand Paizo drawing the line where they did, makes sense for them.
3. Treatment of Monsters: No, not a diatribe about monster’s rights. Simply that in a number of cases they really seem to have undervalued a number of monsters drawn from mythology: Charybdis (CR 13); Draugr (CR 2); Scylla (CR 16). Then again maybe I am biased. Either way its simply another nitpick I am struggling to come up with.

Conclusions: Possibly the best monster book ever in terms of overall execution. Makes Wizards of the Coast’s 4th Edition Monster Manuals look pedestrian by comparison. Though I still maintain mechanically 4E is infinitely superior to 3E/Pathfinder; there is no doubting that the choice of monsters here and the attention Paizo have lavished upon this book are worthy of the highest praise. If you are still DMing or playing 3rd Edition/Pathfinder then this book is a must purchase. If you, like me, just love monster books and great artwork, then give it a look.

Overall: 9 (out of 10) bordering on a 10 out of 10 if I was still interested in 3rd Edition/Pathfinder.