#dm sebs

[curseofsebs]

So I'm going to be runny a Rage of Demons/ Out of Abyss campaign with another small group with my fiancée and the glorious @deathshead13. Having an absolute blast reading through the campaign, it's a real strange one, but a wonderful and weird exploration of a truly fantastic and wicked Alice in Wonderland. I'm so hype! Really looking forward to starting with the Rage of Demons first quests and then weaving the rest through the campaign. Cannot wait! I thoroughly recommend listening to the glorious The Rancor's Brothel podcast if you are you are planning to or are running it as they are thoroughly entertaining and involved. Their Curse of Strahd was spectacular and their various Cthulhu games are great. Time to start practicing the voices for the various Underdark denizens! Good hunting and happy gaming :)

[curseofsebs]

Myrkari - Key Concept Art by Matthew Mylinski The Myrkari are a race of nightmarish avian humanoids who are untrusted at best by most civilized regions mostly for being unpredictable. They appear seemingly at random for unknown agenda and reason, often for a plausibly beneficial purpose. Though they claim to never utter a lie, it is a well-known fact that the truth you hear very well might not be what you think it is. "The words of a Myrkari are never what they seem." - old saying  The more I see and read about these Myrkari, the more I need to see them in action in Barovia and beyond!

[curseofsebs]

D&D Alchemist Class Flavour

With my new Innistrad campaign requiring the restriction of races to the Planeshift: Innistrad humans variants, I made a whole bunch of extra classes and archetypes available, well beyond those in the official books (I'm a bit of a DMs Guild obsessive).

We ended up with a Swashbuckler Inquisitor (Rogue), a Druid of the Equinox Hermit from the absolutely fantastic Ravenloft Archetypes, Gunslinger Haunted One/ Inquisitor (Fighter) and an Alchemist. The standard classes all had the extra flavour things to choose from Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but there wasn't anything for the Alchemist. So I came up with this for them and any other Alchemists who might want to use it:

Reason for Experimenting

Alchemists come to the science for a myriad of reasons, from family or institutional instruction to attempts, staving off disease or aging, to brewing narcotics and enhancements.

1. Alchemy is a family tradition with house secrets passed down over generations.

2. You attended an institution or studied under a master that taught you the alchemical sciences.

3. You turned to alchemy as a last resort in an attempt to combat a disease that afflicted yourself or a loved one, and your experiments became an obsession.

4. You fear aging and want immortality, which you belive you will one day achieve through experimentation.

5. Either out of necessity or just having a knack for it, you have turned to brewing narcotics and contraband substances to sell on the black market.

6. You have always wanted to be better: stronger, faster, more hardy, or more intellectual, and this brought you to the science.

Signature Ingredient Base

Due to the amount of trial and error, as well as the vast quantities of brewing, alchemists often rely on one or two base ingredients for their concoctions that become their signature.

1. Water: whether it's fresh, sea, sewer or holy, water is almost always readily available.

2. Dirt: whether it's soil, 'night soil', earth or dust, you don't mind getting your hands dirty.

3. Alcohol: from pure ethanol and methylated spirits to through beers, wines and mead, what's good for you is good for the brew.

4. Plants: from weeds, grasses and seeds, specifically cultivated plants, to bark, leaves and tree sap, you collect your ingredients from nature or at least the cracks in the cobbles.

5. Blood: drawn from yourself, animals you keep or capture, or even unfortunate 'assitants' to your research.

6. Rocks: from ground up stones and stolen cobbles and tiles, chalks and clays from the cliffs and coast, to gemstones for the more discerning and wealthy.

Indulgence

Alchemy can become an utter obsession for those who practice it, as well as the ingredients, concoctions and fumes of their experiments having a significant effect on those experimenting with them.

1. Recluse: your work is your life and you have completely lost yourself in it. Your mind is always on your work, all downtime is spent experimenting and you only begrudgingly leave your labortoary to adventure to fuel your work.

2. Human Canvas: you are constantly experimenting on yourself with new concoctions to interesting effect. This experimentation has left its mark on your body and mind in a number of interesting and unsightly ways.

3. Addiction: you have became addicted to one of your concoctions and will to to any length to ensure you have a supply, as well withdrawal have a variety of physical and mental effects.

4. Delusions of Grandeur: You believe that you are the greatest scholar and scientist is the land and are not shy about the fact. You have nothing but disdain for those that consider themselves your peers and the lamens and dullards of the world.

5. Captive Audience: You are constantly looking for test subjects, or as the pesky constabulary call them, 'victims' to try out new concoctions on. Humanoids are preferable, but any creature will do in a pinch.

6. Snake Oil: You are an entrepreneur and are happy to sell anything to fund your work, using your knowledge of what concoctions and potions should look like to defraud your customers. This can occasionally come back to bite you, as you reach in your bag and find you packed the wrong bottle or file.

Feel free to use this. Comments and criticism welcome.

Good hunting and happy gaming!

[curseofsebs]

Magic Item: Figurine of Wondrous Power: Ivory Boar

After being inspired by @5ecardaday’s Web conversion as a perfect gift from Old Lady Sybil, the so-called Witch of the the Underpine, I decided it would be cool if everyone got something a little special from her that shows she’s been paying attention and are personal to each of the Jaunters.

Hjördís salvaged some tusks from the party’s encounter, or rather slaughtering, of a stench of Festerhide Boars in the first session, and was rather rudely snubbed by a jeweler who thought the idea of buying them off her was laughable, so I came up with this:

Figurine of Wondrous Power: Ivory Boar (Wondrous, Uncommon)

A figurine of wondrous power is a statuette of a beast small enough to fit in a pocket. If you use an action to speak the command word and throw the figurine to a point on the ground within 60 feet of you, the figurine becomes a living creature. If the space where the creature would appear is occupied by other creatures or objects, or if there isn’t enough space for the creature, the figurine doesn’t become a creature.

The creature is friendly to you and your companions. It understands your languages and obeys your spoken commands. If you issue no commands, the creature defends itself but takes no other actions.

The creature exists for a duration specific to each figurine. At the end of the duration, the creature reverts to its figurine form. It reverts to a figurine early if it drops to 0 hit points or if you use an action to speak the command word again while touching it. When the creature becomes a figurine again, its property can’t be used again until a certain amount of time has passed, as specified in the figurine’s description.

The Ivory a oar is a Scrimshawed Boar Tusk 4" long that can become a Boar for 8 hours and then can’t be again used for 7 days.

I wanted it to be magical and fun, but not too overpowered and crazy at such low levels.

Cannot wait to hand this out next session! The party is getting surprisingly huge with our Druid of the Equinox (from the incredible Ravenloft Archetypes on DMs Guild) having the ability to haw a more substantial Wolf Familiar named Athal and having taken the Animal Companion Feat and getting an Elk called Haussos.

Good hunting and happy gaming :)

Festerhide Boar by Nils Ham

Scrimshaw Boar: http://tide-mammoth.com/eshop/en/animal-netsuke/5044-mammoth-ivory-fossil-bark-wildboar-netsuke-scrimshaw-carving-n4669.html

[curseofsebs]

Word of the Day D&D Inspiration: Debonair Definitions for debonair courteous, gracious, and having a  sophisticated charm: a debonair  gentleman. Origin of debonair The adjective debonair, from Old French  debonaire, originated in Old French as the phrase de bon aire “of good lineage.” The aire of that phrase comes from the Latin noun ager “field,”which  presumably meant “nest” in Vulgar  Latin. Debonair entered English in the 13thcentury. The Heirs of Debon The heirs of Debon are the surviving members of an aristocratic and powerful family, whose ancestor's dabbled with the Dark Arts, performed sacrilegious rites and mad Infernal pacts with creatures of the dark and shadowed realms. While they are not strictly Vampires, they do share a number of similarities in their effective immortality, Inhuman strength and agility and am unslakeable thirst for blood. However, the result of the ancestral Debon's unholy dealings lead to a great corruption of the flesh and a mutating of the physical form that only increased in its malignancy over the years. The combination of the foul acts, predation and grotesque appearance attracted many a monster hunter and hero to opulent manor, The Airey, perched atop a sheer, crumbling cliff over a wrought iron sea, which the surrounding villages dubbed, The Avery, 'Cos of all those mad, predatory birds that roost there. Vultures the lot of 'em'. In the first few centuries the barren fields of the grounds began to grow a great harvest of tombstones that grew slowly in the dark like mushrooms. Each one bore the name of the foolhardy hero with their broken and useless weapons laid before it. Though as the time past the scions of House Debon became more twisted, both in form and deed, inviting great hunting parties, bolstered by torch wielding mobs, many who had lost husbands and daughters, to the profane rituals or incessant feeding. The house was burned to the ground and the monstrosities within cleansed by silvered steel, holy rites and purifying magical flame. None could be left to live, so the expansive nursery with its malformed offspring was almost brimming when the flames engulfed the cots. And that was the end of it. The blackened bones of the place were left as a bleak reminder, jutting out above the storm-ravaged seas like the splintered ribs and broken bones of some fetid behemoth, while the endless expanse of wastes, speckled with countless headstones like maggots was warded and fenced off for safe measure. The ground was too tainted and sickly enriched with the wickedness and barbarity of Debons to ever yield anything but strange fruit. As with any neat and simple ending, that was not the end of it. A number of the older children escaped the inferno with bundles of their baby siblings, throwing themselves through stained glass windows and plunging into the murky depths below. A handful of these children were malformed, but mighty and survived the horrific burns and the plunge into the frigid waters, those that were not burnt in their cribs, dashed on the rocks or drowned that is. Below The Airey a ragged cave system had been gouged into the cliff face by the elements, and there they have lived for generations, slaking their thirst for blood on the bloated and fearsome Walrasks. Leaving nothing to waste the skins, wicked curved tusks and pointed fangs, and even the blubber and dessicated entrails as material, tools and fuel for their subterranean society. The Heirs of Debon eek out a simple, if strange and incestuous existence in their cave system, and feel no wish to acknowledge the dark things that haunt their dreams and that both made and destroyed their ancestors. However, they were recently discovered by fishermen investigating lights seen in the festering remains of The Airey . A scuffle insued, and fearing got their lives the Heirs of Devon killed on the crew, who brandished torch and cutless, tearing him open with sharpened daggers and tools of Walrask tusk. This combined with strange lights in The Airey, strange goings on and a spate of missing persons is enough to ignite the ire of the locals. The heroes could be hired by the fishermen or villagers to purge their land once and for all of the tainted family, believing them to be the cause of the ills of the land, as well as not wanting to share the land with such bizarre folk. What they don't know it that these poor people are innocent of all but defending themselves, the crimes of their ancestors, and rules of genetics and propriety they were never given a chance to learn, being the scolded and forgotten children, thought burnt alive by the pious villagers, warriors and holy men all those years ago. Their tale is sad and the heroes could make it sadder, put an end to it once and for all or give them compassion and understanding never given to them and convince them to come to a Temple of Healing and hopefully, with some hard work and the affection of the Gods, find a way to reintegrate into society, probably far away from their ancestral home and begrudging neighbours. But before that can happen there is the matter of the lights in the ruins and disappearances. The centuries of sacrifice and foul ritual made the barrier to Lower Planes and even further Beyond much thinner here and something familiar to this former manor and house of madness and depravity has called another who wishes to bolster their magic and lifespan by dealing with this eldritch patron. If not dealt with this mad scholar will unleash legions of devils, demons and things that shun description and spread madness wherever they cavort, as well as gaining phenomenal and corrupting power that they will use to enslave the land in the name of their unknowable patron. There is never a neat and simple ending... *** So this just got me inspired enough to sit here for few hours and come up with that, which I would love to work into some kind of Lovecraftian D&D campaign, leaning heavily on the Tome of Foes and some of the Wonderful, weird creatures from previous editions and conversions of Cthulu monsters. Definitely have to thank Mike Bennett for all his incredible readings of Lovecraft and How We Roll for their awesome Cthulu games, which definitely help inspire this idea, which has a certain reel of fishy Innsmouth in it. I really need to file this away to work on when I have more time! Good hunting and happy gaming :) Ballybunion Castle, Ireland Ladies Beach 'Meeting Waters' by robcurtross

[curseofsebs]

I just agreed to start a Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign with my good friend who is my masseuse and who was a great help to me when I was really suffering with my PTSD through coaching, acupuncture, cupping and qigong, so it is wonderfully fitting that he is planning to play a Monk based on David Carradine's character from Kung Fu: Shaolin monk and martial-arts expert Caine flees China after his master is killed. Now he wanders the Old West of America, defending the helpless and beating down bad guys with his skills, all while trying to find his half-brother and evade Chinese bounty hunters. He's completely new to D&D so I'm going to be helping him with his character. I'm thinking either a variant human with martial adept feat or a Goliath, because Goliath Monk just sounds do freaking cool! My fiancée, Sarah, will also be in the game, so she'll finally be playing in more games than she is DMs after a long time. Trying to get her to try the greatest class of them all (in my opinion) the Cleric! But she's courting the idea of a Warlock. Could be a very interesting team glass cannon, but I could hook them up with a downtime healer who they could persuade to follow them into battle. I'm thinking of starting them as level 3 as it can be better for someone's first try, to fully flesh out their character, be able to choose their archetypes and not be so easily deaded. Just need to alter the encounters to their levels and and use milestones for levelling up to 8 rather than 5. I am very much excite for this, as well as possibly playing some one shots that might develop into a campaign with a pair of loveliest people I've had the pleasure of meeting on here later this year! I cannot get enough D&D good times! Good hunting and happy gaming :)