Moradyln and his organization

(since I plan to show this to my players, no stats will be posted. Not to mention, Ihavent' made any. email me if you want me to get to work. Better picture later, this is an early sketch)

Many people are after this guy and his cult. Tiamat’s Blessed hate him for his lack of concern for material goods, The Underdark hates him for his power (They wish they had it) The Order of the Silver Dragon doesn’t like his desire to remove strife from the world. Many Druids and Raven Queen worshippers want him dead for his massive use of Undead. A few scattered Vampire clans despise due to some undead pride thing. In 3.5, I had him stated as a Sorcerer/Monk/Pale Master, but that’s not going anywhere. Ahem, I mean, although the entire extent of his combat abilities is unknown, he is rumored to be a Cleric with some Warlock powers.

Who is this guy anyway? My players may have heard whispers of him, as “the guy who runs this dungeon.” However, he has other purposes. The idea for this character came when I was trying to think of an antagonist… and one that would look sort of cool fighting my character. So, I thought a monk that blast necrotic energy along with Ki may look pretty sweet.

Physical Description: A man of average height, with most of his hair shaved off, except for a ponytail in the back. He is usually wearing a dark robe with glyphs all over it. His most prominent feature is a skeletal graft. His entire left arm has no flesh or muscle, and is surrounded in a green aura. Often he leaves his hand right out in the open. It is unknown whether this is his original arm, or if he chopped it off and placed on a new arm.

Organization: Back on topic, Moradyln is the head of the “Union of Equivalence” This guild takes members of all races, whether they be Drow, Orc, Kobold, Human, or whatever. Their main goal is to create a fair and effective world. Their methods, however, aren’t so nice. Generally, he goes after peasant populations, who don’t generally have much money, and offers them positions in his organization. Often, he will send in extra workers to compensate for an area’s weaknesses, such as Orcs in mountain ranges, and Kobolds in mining areas.

Not so bad eh? Well, if you refuse him…. Well, nobody refuses. If you do not wish to join this organization, chances are, you will be killed. After that, a ritual will be performed, turning you into a zombie. Your zombie will then be used to perform the farming activities you would have done while alive. Fortunately, zombies do not require a large amount of soul energy, so you will have plenty left over. This energy is used to power lamps and other convenient magical devices, helping the GOOD workers.

Ah yes, the souls. At any time, Moradyln is carrying around a vast supply of gems for carrying people’s souls in, known as soul lamps. Normally, these things do nothing, but once activated, they absorb all of the souls in the area, and animate the nearby bodies, preparing them to follow Moradyln’s orders. Many of these are spread throughout his bases, usually used to light things up, and keep the zombies going. No use putting good bodies to waste, right? Possession of these lamps keeps Moradyln’s weaker enemies in check, but only angers the tougher ones.

Dieties worshipped: None. When Moradyln’s faithful die, they are simply turned into zombies, and their souls are also used to power items. It isn’t as bad for them, because they are willing to go through with it. Moradyln usually doesn’t attack go about attacking the more peaceful Diety’s (unless there is a town in dire need of a savior… then he comes in with his organization) because, the hostile Diety’s attack him enough. This is to say, he doesn’t care about them because his hands are full. Most religions are after him anyway, because he is quite open about his dislike of the gods, and doesn’t take much effort to hide his necromantic practices. He has many underground shrines dedicated to advancing his goals to nearby villages, and a wide variety of followers….

Important allies: Often seen with a goblin Warlock. Also, there are rumors that he has a major operative in the Underdark, creating an army for him. Many shudder at the thought of stopping the constant war of the Underdark, and bringing an army of Druegar, mind flayers, beholders, and drow to the surface for conquest.

Finding and Maintaining a DnD Group

How do I find a Dungeons and Dragons group? This isn’t actually that hard, if you know what you’re doing. I’ve found that the easiest method is… TO BE OBVIOUS! Go to your local gameshop, school cafeteria, or other local hangout with lots of people and look like you want to play. Look around and see if you can find others who look like they want to play. Go on, go to where you want to play at, sit down, set op a character sheet, have a couple miniatures out, and read you’re books. Guess what? You’ll attract attention, and people’s curiosity. And BAM!, soon you’ll have a player base.

Unfortunately, just having a playerbase isn’t enough. You have to able to maintain this playerbase. This is especially important to your DM, but that doesn’t mean the players are free of responsibility. This has to be an environment that makes everybody want to keep coming back for more.

BEING A PLAYER: Well, you play the game. And keep it a game! Sure the rules are there, but mainly as a technique to keep the anarchy at bay. Try to know the rules beforehand, so you’re not flipping through books for the entire session. Nothing is more dull than arguing over rules and watching each other flip through books! Encourage people in your group to memorize stuff, and failing that, write it down on 3x5 notecards. This is even more relevant in 4th Edition, since pretty much everything is based around a power system. So write down your powers. Used a power? Put it in a separate pile. Wow, that was easy.

The DM: For most monsters, just write their stats on little notecards, and keep your combat data on one sheet of paper. Set up a section for player initiative, and write their damage and effects next to their name. Do the same for the monsters. Encounter decks are a good idea if you want a random element, but you should keep paging through the monster manual to a minimum. Try this, and this entire game has much less book flipping. And more hacking and slashing.

Try this stuff, and try browsing some forums, and watch how much more exiting your games become. You’ll be amazed how much more fun your game is if everybody puts in effort.

Creating a cult: Tiamat's Blessed

I’ve been looking for a main use for this blog… and I think I’ve got it. I believe this will be mainly used for the various cults and organizations that I come up with while dungeon mastering. Feel free to use them in your games, if you would like.

Faithful followers of Tiamat, who obey her tenants quite faithfully. This sounds like almost any other religion, except Tiamat demands that her followers take from others, and to hoard it for yourselves. This creates an entire cult of people attempting to steal from others.

Composition: This cult contains a large amount of separate races, from humans to kobolds to many… prideful Dragonborne. Worse yet, it is believed that chromatic dragons are in several high ranking positions, some for leadership, and some simply for heavy artillery. All in all, these are some of Tiamat’s best followers, making for a great group of antagonists.

Using these guys in a game: Want to have some moderately organized chromatic dragon followers? Here’s your cult! These guys have been known to invade dungeons and take them for themselves, bringing all of the heavy weapons they can drag. For high profile tasks, you can expect that a Dragon or two may come along for the ride, for crowd control.

Front lines usually consist of Kobolds, with a human berserker taking the lead. Human bandits often provide backup, in case the kobolds get plowed through. Winter ops units will often have an appropriately sized white dragon waiting in the shadows in case things go wrong. Dragonborn are often commanders, as their natural Charisma and strength makes them ideal leaders. Although they posses a large variety of character types the higher ranks contain a lot of paladins and fighters, due to them being the best at single combat. This is not a cult of Lloth, so treachery is not widely encouraged.

SORRRY, I DON’T HAVE MY MONSTER MANUAL WITH ME! EXAMPLE ENCOUNTERS LATER!

Opinions on DnD 4th Edition

Well, we gots a blog started, I should start with my position on a very relevant subject: Dungeons and Dragons. I am going to say that I greatly enjoy fourth edition, and it is here to stay. Sorry 3.5, you we’re fun while you were in your prime, but it’s time for us to move on. I know many of my friends still love 3.5, and they may play it to their heart’s content, however, I’m staying over here. I tried 4th ed, and my 3.5 material is now considered background material.

I know, you’re all ready to flame me. However, I realize it is only due to your reliance on a clunky system that has WAY too many rules. Have you tried initiating somebody to 3.5? Well, it’s incredibly difficult to explain. Now we have 4th ed, and everything may be a bit easier to swallow.

“But now it’s too mainstream!”

Hey, guess what guys? You’re playing Dungeons and Dragons. Last time I checked it isn’t mainstream. It still has room for complexity. You can still roleplay. Now there are fewer restrictions on it. All right, I was a bit skeptical at first. I was concerned about some of the rules getting out of balance, but then I tried it. It’s actually quite fun. Everything works nicely, and is much better than it looks on paper.

THE CLASSES: After looking at my minty fresh source books, I was a little concerned. All of the classes follow the same structure now. You create a character, and select a bunch of bells and whistles. Every character is point buy, so all party members are equal in terms of raw stats. All of the races have things that make them good, so we no longer have deal with half-elves that can’t do anything. Heck, half-elves are actually GOOD this time around. There are a large variety of races, from the short and resilient Halflings, to the *sigh* dark and mysterious Tieflings.. After you’ve picked out a race and class you get to pick some “at-will” powers, which essentially become your basic attack actions. After this you select “encounter powers” which are pretty cool things that you can do only once per fight. Finally you get to select “daily powers,” which are stupid awesome things you only get to do once per day. Think of these as your character’s finishing move, or their signature attack. The possibilities are endless, and they allow for tons of variation, even among characters of the same class. A Dwarven Fighter will wear heavy armor gear that takes advantage of how tough Dwarves are, while an Elf will probably wear less armor and focus on fancy maneuvers. And they both work!

The beauty of this is that wizards don’t need crossbows, as they get an INFINITE amount of magic missile or ray of frost. Imagine that, Wizards fighting like Wizards! Fighters get all kinds of fancy melee tricks that make them draw attention towards them instead of the caster, and can punish enemies for not paying attention to them.

Clerics get to attack while casting buffs, which although it sounds silly makes people want to be a healer! That’s right, EVERYBODY GETS TO HAVE FUN! They can still heal people, but they also can call down fire from the heavens to mark targets for execution. Rogues and Rangers get to have some fun too, by going up and attacking weak points for MASSIVE DAMAGE. A properly played rogue is will make hell for a DM, since he’ll slit the throats of whoever the fighter is distracting. Y’know what’s great about this system? Combat gives everybody something to do!

DUNGEON MASTERS: This is actually a bit of a challenge. You see, the entire party gets all kinds of goodies, and if they work together, they will curbstomp everything you send after them. Yeah…. But wait, the rest of the stuff is easy. The Dungeon Masters guide and the monster manual contain all of the information you’ll ever need to ensure that the entire party does not end up dying, or getting easy wins. Just trust the books. Send opponents of their level after them, and watch them wreak havoc. There are rules to customize monsters quickly and easily, and to make fights with all kinds of weird stuff. Vampire Robots? Done! Go nuts, as your players will be trying to stay one step ahead of you. As a Dungeon Master, it’s your job to entertain them, so think on your feet. It even states this in the Dungeon Master’s guide! Thankfully, there are less numbers around, so you can focus more on being creative.

Role Playing: Okay, there aren’t many rules on this. This seems to be a problem for some people, but seriously guys, do you need a book to tell you everything? If you’re going to talk to the count, talk to him! Making a weapon? Tell your DM, and if he’s worthy of the title of DM, he’ll tell you something. Seriously, just let them spend some gold and say they built the weapon themselves. This is a cooperative storytelling game, so creativity is a must! Heck, when I DM, I ENCOURAGE coming up with ideas. If there is no rule for it, usually it’s so obvious you shouldn’t need one. Seriously, in 3.5 you needed ranks in profession to be a decent janitor. Anyway, some of these skills were mostly ridiculous, and I’m glad they used the space to make the fighter as fun to play as the Wizard.

Complaints: Alright, Alright, I have a few complaints. I sort of like the flavor of 3.5 more. This edition makes being part dragon or part demon seem less… significant. That, and some of my favorite classes are missing. Bard, Monk, Druid, and Barbarian are missing (actually Barbarian has been released, and I heard it is good.) Some races are missing, (gnomes got demoted to an entry in the monster manual, half-orcs are never mentioned) There are no good (aligned) monsters in the monster manual. The new alignment system is stupid, and as far as I’m concerned, we’re still using 3.5’s alignment system. They simplified it to Lawful Good, Good, unaligned, evil, and chaotic evil. Where is the mafia and where is Robin Hood? Good and evil. I find this much less descriptive. However, this system is still relatively new, and we can expect the old stuff to be released. The fans DEMAND it.

Buy it?: Well, try it first. Seriously, don’t just read the books, find a group and try it. Some of it looks incredible silly, and all of the classes look the same, until you actually play the game. With a competent group, this is the best roleplaying experience you are going to find.

(I may add to or edit this later but I really wanna get this blog on the road)