The Nine, The Races And The Sibling War

Once, The mortal world of Era was overrun and inhabited by demons and devils, waging war against each other. After hundreds of years of devilish and demonic warfare, Era was almost a barren rock. The only living creatures left which weren’t devils or demons, were the dragons, and they were all but extinct.

Then The Nine arrived, beings of extraordinary power, and the tide changed. They claimed the world as theirs, and told both devils and demons to be gone. They didn’t. So great battles were fought, and in the end, the demons were pushed into the Abyss and the devils into the Nine Hells, and Era was all but closed off to them.

The Nine, now self-proclaimed gods, set upon restoring the mortal world, breathing life into Era, so that it once again would be a pleasant place.

Moradin, the All-Father, showed the way, and soon created the perfect creatures. Dwarves. Tall, powerful and hard-working, they were all a god could wish for. He showed them how to build and organize things, and soon the dwarven populations grew and populated Era, building cities in the mountains.

Corellon, his wisest child, having grown forests and populated them with animals, decided to follow his father’s example. He created the elves, slender, elegant and serene, perfect for living and enjoying the wilds of the new mortal world.

Asmodeus, Corellon’s older brother, quickly became jealous of his brother’s creation. Or rather, he saw room for improvement. The elves were way too free-spirited and freedom-loving, too undetermined for Asmodeus’ taste. He wanted creatures much more driven, just as himself. Not long after, Asmodeus created the dark elves, a darker and more malign version of the happy treehuggers his brother had created. The dark elves lived in the forest too, but whereas the elves loved dancing in meadows in the sunlight, the dark elves loved prowling in the shadows, hunting and hurting.

Not wanting to take the backseat compared to the other kids of their father, Pelor, Bane and their sister the Raven Queen pooled their magical might and created humans. While individually not as powerful as the dwarves, elves or dark elves, the humans were none the less a force to be reconned with. Especially their quick procreation and ability to adapt and learn proved to be a decisive factor. Humans soon eclipsed the other races in numbers.

Mask, the enigmatic brother/cousin, soon followed suit. Not having the creative powers of his brethren, he made a hybrid. He took a little of each, and although the result was surprising, Mask was satisfied. The halflings were definitely different, an unknown quantity.

Tiamat and Bahamut on the other hand, seemed satisfied with their newly acquired symbiosis with the dragons.

Time passed and differences grew. Slowly the gods came at odds with each other, either directly or through their races.

In order to not ruin their creation in the war that everyone by now knew is coming, the gods made the Divine Pact and seclude themselves away from the mortal world, vowing to never interfere directly with the business of mortals.

Moradin even ordered the dwarves to take no part in the upcoming conflict, as he thought his children to be silly and careless. He sent the dwarves underground to be far away from the war. There they are somehow affected by mystical energies, and slowly turn into what they are know as today, short stocky and stubborn people.

The war, later called the Sibling War or the War for Dominance, began, with Pelor, Corellon, Bahamut on one side, and Bane, Asmodeus and Tiamat on the other. Mask played both sides, and the Raven Queen played none - or both perhaps. The humans of the triplets were divided as well.

The war raged for years before Mask openly participated. He stole some foul magic from Bahamut’s personal spellbook and gave the magic to Tiamat. She used the magic to corrupt stolen eggs and created the dragonborn. Later during the war, some of the dragonborn rebelled against Tiamat and joined Bahamut, who welcomed them home, like lost children. Tiamat became desperate after losing a big part of her own personal army, so she corrupted eggs of her own chromatic dragons too, hoping they would be more loyal.

As time passed, the magical might of the new races start to take on horrific aspects.

The dark elves use evil ancient demon-magic discovered in the ruins of the demon-cities to twist captured elves and halflings into horrible creatures called trolls and goblins. Meanwhile, in retaliation, the elves capture humans and use their magic to change them to orcs, brutal warriors to put in their vanguards.

(TBC)

Musings on dndnext playtest

So, like many others, I have had the time to look over the playtest rules of dndnext. I haven’t played yet, that won’t be until the 12th of June.

As a DM of many years, I have always had a weakness for the monsters. I love my D&D monsters, and I see a lot of good in the playtest monsters. I love the 4e monsters, especially the ease of making them and balancing them so that could really test the party, but they just have way, way too many hit points, the most interesting abilities have been neutered and their lore section is often lacking or really bland. The monsters of the playtest seem better in all three regards. There are definitely some cool and awesome (read: abilities that will make my players cry) monster abilities in the few statblocks. For example, I love the stirge, the wight, the medusa and the gray ooze abilities. Regarding lore, I find it significantly better than it has been for years, perhaps since 2e (2e MM is by far my favorite). I also thing it is all kinds of awesome that immunities have returned. I was happy when they were taken out, but after playing 4e with a lack of immunities, I must admit that I was mistaken. It just doesn’t feel right. Last but not least, I just love little quirky details like the one about the glowing beetles. Hit point wise, it also looks better. I haven’t done any hardcore math, but it doesn’t feel completely off.

Moving on to the classes and races, I also find myself fairly satisfied. The dndnext playtest has a lot of things to like, like the return of Vancian casting, one of my few regrets with 4e, like the cleric having spontaneous casting (I always thought they should at least be slightly different from wizards), or like the change in dailies for martial characters. While the 4e style of daily attacks never bothered me, I definitely prefer martial characters being based on at-will attacks and have any daily or encounter powers to be something different than special attacks. The Fighter’s Surge and the rogue’s Lucky abilities feel just right. I also like the channel divinity system, which can be used for different spells/powers. Should work great to diversify the cleric class. I am also a huge fan of the class-theme-background system. So many interesting possibilities for customization within an established framework.

Not everything is perfect though. Obviously. It’s a very early playtest. The fighter seems a tad bland, perhaps even weak. I am not sure just how bad it is. A little tweaking to the armors and the inclusion of attacks of opportunity would probably fix it - at least at the first 3 levels. The interesting thing will however be how it scales, compared to say the wizard.

Speaking of scaling, I am not totally over the moon about the rogue’s sneak attack. +1d6 per level seems insane. Especially considering that the rogue’s ability to get advantage seems (at least for the playtest) to rely heavily on the DM’s (good) graces.

I am also not a big fan of absolutes - at least when given to the players. Poison immunity to all dwarves and charm/sleep immunity to all elves seems a tad much. Why not just use the advantage/disadvantage mechanics?

As mentioned earlier, I really like how dndnext reads. The rules seem quick to play and easy to understand. Very intuitive, if that makes any sense. There were a few things I didn’t like, live the overnight healing, but luckily it’s completely dissociated from the rest of the rules, so it’s fairly easy to change just how many hit points a night’s rest gives you. The same way, I am not a fan of the surprise system. Just going last seems a tad lame if you are ambushed, and it also creates combats where you have 7 monsters going together every round, something which I have worked hard to avoid since 2e, since that usually leads to a higher number of TPK’s in my games. And as my players will tell you, even if not asked, there are more than enough TPK’s in my campaigns. The last thing that I really didn’t like, at least on paper, is the no-CON-modifier to hit points. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t part of 4e, but somehow it just makes sense. I might view it in a more favorable light after actually playing some dndnext, but we will have to wait about 12 days for that.

So that was the 3 things I didn’t like, which leaves a hell of a lot that I did like. From the simple skill checks (which are actually ability checks), to the contest mechanic (opposed rolls, but can be int vs dex), to the advantage/disadvantage mechanic, the rules are very easy to understand, and they do not get in your way. It’s a game you can pick up and “get” in very short order. Sure, there are probably a few things that need tweaking, like the DC’s of skill checks, but that’s what a playtest is for too, no?

Overall, I will say that I think that WotC have made a good, simple basis for a core game. One could say that they have made a game with the essentials, so perhaps it is a pity that we have a game called Essentials. That name might have been more fitting. The system is flexible, seems robust and at the same time easy to tinker with. It reads as if it runs quickly, and most importantly, it feels like D&D.

I am pretty sure that I will soon exclusively be playing dndnext.

Era

A rough outline of the campaign world, called Era. Era is more or less the size of Earth, with similar temperatures and fauna.

As can be seen, Era consists of 6 continents/areas, Ular, Nala, Canoristi, Gihunia, Zabenem and Regosi. Ular is where it all started. The arrival of the gods, the birth of the races, the Sibling War etc. All the other continents were not populated by the civilized races until later.

Welcome

With the imminent release of the dndnext playtest, I have decided to start a new blog. Mostly for the campaign-world I will be working on, but it might also be used to talk about the playtest and later on the dndnext products. Assuming I find the game to my liking, that is.