#clean knives

[ttrpgtreacle]

Giant spiders are common medium level carnivores in the Shattered Archipelago. They are loosely social, making giant nets in the lower, cloudier levels. Some of them have been lightly domesticated by the outlanders who live here, and by some of the Clean Knives.

[ttrpgtreacle]

The Puzzle of Two Degrees Tom. This one was a flop. Total flop. The four quadrants represent separate letter palettes the party would have to select to spell out MAMA, the name of the leader of the Clean Knives gang. The difficulty comes with the fact that there's very little immediate feedback, and it had been so long since they dealt with the Clean Knives gang that they had kind of forgotten about Mama. So it goes.

[ttrpgtreacle]

Many years later, as he bled out alone within the forgotten recesses of the Gorodzuba municipal system, Two Degrees Tom was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Haha, just kidding folks. In reality, Two Degrees Tom was not an especially troubled member of a large family cursed to a cavalcade of magical and sometimes salacious events, broadly reflecting the troubled development of South America. He's actually a crocodile employed/owned by the the Clean Knives gang, feeding off the prisoners they deign to throw his way as a method 'cleaning up the trash.'

The players did kill Two Bit Tom. A truly unique creature in the world, perhaps the like of which will never be seen again. Well, they're Sky Pirates, not Sky Conservationists.

[ttrpgtreacle]

The Lair of Two Degrees Tom is a small enclosed cistern in the undercity of Gorodzuba where the Clean Knives gang keeps one of their waste disposal systems, a large esoterically unique crocodile called Two Degrees Tom. Two Degrees Tom is fed a sporadic diet of miscreants, traitors, and authority figures.

[ttrpgtreacle]

The Cave Puzzle (it's in a cave) was an example of how slavishly following your inspirations can lead to chaos. I'm a big fan of the Dishonored games (and other immersive sims, generally) and a common gameplay shakeup within those is to have small ancillary puzzles. My attempt to translate this into dnd did not go well. The players hyperfixated on the vault, and decided that this is what the game was going to be about for a little bit. For 3 sessions.

To be honest, even though I kind of consider it a failure for completely throwing off the pacing. I'm more proud of my players for finding a goal and sticking it out until completion.

The solution of the dial corresponds to the order of steps in the production of Ygat, an elicit drug peddled by the Clean Knives gang. The four colors in the back represent the seasons. The puzzle is made somewhat tractable by the fact that the grey lines on the background are the only positions you can place the arms.

[ttrpgtreacle]

Skies of Walltestia included several custom conditions. In fact, there were so many I often forgot to make art for them and would impromptu use dots of different colors to represent conditions

Horrified/Mesmerized: The next d20 is disadvantage no matter what. After causing this effect, the condition clears itself. 

Fury: Every time a creature with fury is struck, it cumulatively increases damage dealt by 1

Terratoma: Everytime you make an action or bonus action you take 1d4 + 1 poison damage, unless you do it slowly, taking the action and bonus action at once. Taking out the knife or arrow takes an action, but ends the Terratoma effect.

Tottering: Struck by a tactical censer, you must make a DC 16 Constitution check at the end of your turns. Until you succeed, you move as if through difficult terrain.

Vengeance: Gained by dealing 5 or more damage at a time to Cuecueyo. Cuecuetlatza can clear these from you for a variety of effects, usually strengthening attacks.

My personal reflections on these:

Horrified/Mesmerized: This is pretty fun to attach to a lair action. Can the players get rid of the condition before the boss can make them perform a save with it?

Fury: Straight up forgot about it. The scaling is a little wonky. The Cueucetlatza boss fight was a mess, anyway. So it's hard to perform 

Terratoma: the signature ability of the Clean Knives -- their weapons are enchanted with deliberately tampered healing magic, causing their wounds to biologically cauterize, locking the weapon to the target and causing additional stress. This was really fun and it was interesting to see who decided to just tank the hits vs prioritizing getting the knives out of them.

Tottering: I messed up the deployment here. The scenario did involve running, but by the time they reached the npc designed to dole it out, there was nowhere left to run to. It happens.

Vengeance: Another cuecuetlatza ability, so it got a little lost in the wash of it all. HOWEVER, this did have an outsized effect on the Cuecueyo fight, since they didn't know what it was counting up to, they were incentivized to do as little damage as possible at a time. Players reported that they enjoyed this puzzle aspect.

I use the combat utility belt foundry module to implement these custom conditions. I have a setting flipped on so that when someone starts a turn with a condition, the name of the condition and a hyperlink to a related journal entry shows up. This is pretty tidy, in my opinion, and allows for a lot of experimentation.

[noroomforracism-blog1]

Knife Skills - How to Clean Knives