House Rule Mixtape: Featuring Climbing on The Biggerest, Organ Damage and more

Print PDF  (re)MUXTUPE: rules old and new, fixed, remixed or repeated
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.SCaling MOnsters With Violent Intents
I keep getting track backs about the climbing on big monsters rules. And I'm like "man those, what was I thinking? Why do I think additionally mechanics are a good idea? Also damage reduction , while stimulatitionistly appropriate , in actual game play I have been hating. Wait what did I just think? "Stimulationistly" buuu.."
Also Monster Johnston makes some of that sense with skeletons and getting bonuses is more fun than avoiding penalties. Also the Zak Smith version that was +1 to hit and damage for every round of climbing. But I think that giving up an attack is worth more than +1 so:
                     PRINCESS CLIMBING ON RULES REVISED:
ignore all that damage reduction noise. You get +1 to hit and +5 to damage for every round you spend climbing up on something. ( up to a maximum of 1 round per 2 hit dice. OR something )The climbed-on can take an attack or move action to make you make a dexterity check (it's trying to flick you off) or a strength check (it's trying to shake you off) if you fail you lose a round of climbing and have to make another check. If you fail that you fall off. Initiating climbing with an attack I guess if the creature is paying attention to you (ie actively targeting you for attacks) or a climb check if it's not.




                    The cool thing about this is it works for small creatures climbing on the players. If that pixie spend 3 rounds climbing up to the fighters face , it will get +15 to damage.


ARMOUR PIERCING: 2
An idea for making the interactions between armour and anti armour weapons more impactful in game. Rolling a critical means also a roll on a injury table..
 Unless
you are using "non-lethal attacks", ie punchs and kicks.

 you are heavily armoured (full chain and better). However Maces , lucern hammers, and horsemans picks ignore this and can inflict injury table results on critical hits.


 HUMAN3: WHAT ARE THEY NOT GOOD AT HUH?
So you want a drawback to being human  so you can make all the race modifers One good Thing , One Bad thing. Humans, They just haven't had time to adapt to all this magic floating around. Their bodies just aren't meant for it. If a human being is subject to 3 ongoing magic effects at once they must con save or develop a random mutation.

[4]
 CHASE MECHANIC  
this is still good.


BOWELCHMY:      (5)
 Buried in a long post with old school hack classes, emerge into the light, strange child;
Bowelchemy : You drink all kinds of bizarre stuff and bizarrer stuff happens, for your body is a laboratory, a temple, a brothel, a kitchen and a battle ground. Anything you drink, other than water, evokes strange reactions.
Water no longer counts as water if it has more than 5% of something added to it, unless that thing has a noticeable effect on biological stuff. So water with a drop of poison would need a roll on the table, but water with a drop of lemon juice would not. A glass of water with a tenth of juice in it would however.

You can open throat scull up to 3 litres in one go. Lets say that's about 20 cups.
 
The normal effects of the liquid do not apply , unless they are instantly dangerous to touch (like the strongest of poisons, molten metals, boiling water or strong acids). 

What happens is you flip a coin to choose if you or the d.m picks a verb. In either case the d.m has to determine what mechanical effect that verb has. Say you pick "fly" , the d.m will most likely let you fly briefly , (roll a d6 to determine how many rounds the duration is), "burn" might make you catch fire, "suddenly" might give you an initiative bonus, or make a random monster attack, suddenly.
IF you drink 2 liquids at once, you pick a verb and the d.m picks a noun. (so "Shining Dogs") If you drink 3 liquids at once , you pick a verb, the d.m picks a noun and a random other player picks an adjective. ("Hurt Ghostly Pudding")
 
        6666 ----->  SHIT, CAN THEY BUY THAT?<---------------
1. no, but they can buy this dangerous unstable version
2.yes, but its stolen and the owner has a fix on its location
3.yeah but that was last seen boarding themselves up in a haunted tower
4.no , but this guy will try and scam them
5.no, but this guy will try and scam them OH WAIT actually yes , it does work, surprise to everyone , the guy running the con will try and get it back
6. Sure , but it will become bonded to you. It breaks , so do you
7.yes , but the seller wants to borrow your body for a week
8. Yes, at the No-Moon market, under the ruined bridge, accessible only with dire patronage
9.No, but this guy reckons they can make one, if funded adequately
10. Yes, but sometimes it does the exact opposite.
11. Yes but it requires dark feedings
12.No , and asking about such a thing has set 1d4 cults/ inquisitions after you.

                         7EVEN
                      all purpose encounter table
1. A typical member of the nearest settlement
2. An atypical member of the nearest settlement
3. Medium sized herbivore(s), the base of a healthy food chain
4. Scavenger
5.Predator
6. Apex Predator
7. The thing that sucks about this area happens (sandstorm, blizzard, knife storm)
8. Something actually good about this area is found


             8              
QUICK CRITICALS:
Roll differently coloured d6. One of them the severity: 1. graze  2-3 gash 4-5 broken 6 gone
 Other one 1 head 2 torso 3 leg (right) 4 leg (left) 5 arm (right) 6 arm (left).

                                 NINEQuick Fumbles: 2 dice , d6 and a d4
1.You                                   1 Drop
2.them (friend)                   2 Flung (at)
3.them (foe)                       3 Target
4. Object (held)                  4  Entangle
5. Object (equipped)            
6. Surroundings                     

Resolving Wizard projects with the tarot

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"My wizard spends the month installing lasers in undead. So that is a thing in your campaign now"

here is a little subsystem the makes use of unwieldy chart and tarot cards.
Well you can use any cards really, just assign them to the various rows in the chart.
Chart is here:
CHART!
It won't make any sense yet(..).
So a wizard wants to make up a new spell or slime or duck hybrid or wand of broiling hair.
You , the g.m and the player shoot the shit about how the mechanics work and that.
I'm not going to try and write a system that does that job. That would be GURPS or rolemaster companions. Also, madness.
Then the g.m picks a large number of moneys and the player blathers on about various monster parts that are cluttering up their character sheet that they are throwing in or exactly what they are sewing to what and how drunk and things are crossed off and this is so campaign variable I will not attempt to write a system for it (also I don't want to)

This is for the next bit , where you want something to happen that will surprise you both, involves an element of risk, chance and meaningful player choices. Also gimmicks!

The player draws 5 cards from the major arcana of the tarot (or pokemon cards if you re-skin the chart) .
 They then play 5 rounds.
The first round is for the cost or resource requirements of the project. A card is drawn from the deck and then the player chooses a card to play against it.
Cards have suits Soul, World, Sun, Night.

 Soul beats Sun, Sun beats Night, Night beats World, World beats Soul.

 In the case of Same vs Same or Sun vs World or Night vs soul, the highest value card wins (the major arcana cards have a value from the Fool with Zero , to the World with 21).

The chart result for that card explains what that means for the project. If you lose against a drawn card , the second "inauspicious"  result (after the / ) is applied.

You then continue to round 2 in which the Potency of the project is determined,
 round 3 the convenience or useability ,
round 4 the danger the project puts you in (if any)
and finally 5 , repeatability , ie if an item can you attempt to make another one? If a spell, is it "worked true"? (ie it may be copied into your spell book and be cast and memorized rather than just a one off ritual) and if the project is a creature will it breed or can you even glue another one together ever?

Alternate1 :all 5 opposing cards can be drawn at once and the player then decides which of their cards to play where ( I would think you want to make the chart results have more arbitrary and nasty results)
Alternate 2: The player has only 3 cards and must randomly draw a card for to play 2 of the rounds

CHART IS HERE

I tried to make the chart results general , yet interesting and somehow applicable to making monsters , new spells and items. Which might of been a mistake. Also 22 fucking cards took me so long I really stopped caring a couple of times.
 I hope if it sees use it your campaign you hack the shit out of it. The 5 rounds thing I feel coulda been simplified down but sometimes an idea is too big to manage to grasp correctly on the first go and you need to just let it go and hope someone sees a better way for it.

pokemon fusions

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So I don't hate everything popular. Fusing 2 different pokemon randomly and then drawing the results. Its a thing , now I have done it too and am including the monstering thereoff. I think I made my work difficult by choosing fusions that already looked completely perfect.

                                                                               Voltsian

Voltsians are like panther catfish. Their hide is rubbery and red from a coating of rust and their own freaky secretions. As a defense or a predatory action they generate a red cloud that is extremely conductive. They then send a powerful electric charge via the cloud, stunning all in it.
They are smart, but avaricious , self-centred and lazy to a fault. Their hide is non-conductive , making them resistant to electricity unless the hide is bypassed

Magnaler

Magnaler are pony sized  crabs with self assembled shells of metal. They are shy and reclusive , hiding in vast alien junkyards, wary of being hunting for their shells. They can sculpt metal easily , unnaturally softening it with just a touch of their claws. The claws also possess great strength , capable of slicing a dude in half.
If one can get their trust and friendship they can make armour like no other.

Vilemander

 

Vilemanders  are oily looking radiative salamanders-people, flickering with balefire and calling to each other across war-blasted moors with their inflating dewlaps.  Territorial  and viscous , flicking unnatural fire from their tales , then slinking off again. The fire they produce feeds on fear and panic and is unable to be extinguished unless the victim is calm.

Goloom

Golooms are mood sensitive flowers , normally cultivated in courts and regal gardens, that have grown on graveyards reserved for outcasts and blasphemers. They have absorbed all the bitterness and rage and  burst out the ground screaming and releasing maddening pollen. Also they drink blood any round when they are not running in circles screaming (1 in 4). If they make it to century in age the flower blooms releasing a hydraesque Rage ghost.

 Beetoise

 

Beetoise are a particular type of bee that takes residency in a certain giant turtle corpses The bees have specialized castes , one forming long chains to act as tendons and muscles to animate the turtle. Others make use of the weird cannon like tubes in the shell the former turtle used to breathe from. They use these as cannons, firing a living guided missile bee at threats to the hive. This bee explodes in mass of sticky poison honey. When the Beetoise runs out of these (normally has 1d12 in reserve) it results to swarms instead.

Lickimoth

Lickimoths are a variant on the lemure, formed from parasitic souls, who in life fed on the misery of others, under the guise of a care-giver. They now hunger for the taste of tears, each lick bringing up the worst memories in the licked

I love the smell of khemistry in the morning

Print PDF Players spending money on explosives/incendiary  research.

What could go wrong?


Well letting "you can have cheap, safe and effective. Pick 2" be my guide, here is how I'm resolve this.

Currently available options are:

Flaming oil (1d6 dmg, keeps burning on 6 on the damage die), full round action to prepare and throw.

Fire Lance 1d10 dmg in a 10 by 5 feet cone, dex safe for half. One shot.

Bomb , classic blackball with wick. Cut wick length to control delay. Well, "control". The size of wick is represented by a number from zero and 4. On the moment it's lit roll a d4 , add that number to it. 6 or higher it explodes immediately. Immediately upon its landing and at the start of every round roll a d6 and add that number. 6 or more and it explodes.
Explodes for 2d8 (fire/concussive) damage, dex save for half. (10 foot blast radius)



 SO what happens when you pay a bunch of madmen/geniuses to invent something worse/better?

Choose what you are paying them to work on. Then a die is rolled and compared  the difficulty of the item.
A 1000 gold gets you a d8
2000 gets you a d10
4000 gets you a d12
10,000 gets you a d20

In addition if you hire a risk taking visionary , roll a d8
1:they die in an explostion, money and research wasted.
2: they attempt to make something else instead, randomly determine what
3: Add 3 to the roll, but if the device is successful , it will catastrophic fail when a  1, 2 or 3 is rolled to attack.
4: If the roll is succeeded the device is more sturdy and reliable than usual.
5-8 add this number unto to the roll.

Flamethrower :More in the style of a weed sprayer.  Requires 2 rounds pumping to build the pressure required to propel the fluid. Will maintain the pressure for an hour. When tank has pressure any violent jolting will ( explosively) rupture the tank. 1d10 ranged touch attack (10 feet). Sets people on fire if does 6 or more points of damage. Has enough fuel for 12 shots.


DIFFICULTY 8 (1 will be made)

Cluster Bomb : like the bomb , but after the intial explosion 1d6 bomblets (1d8 damage) are scattered around the area. Explode as per Bomb rules

DIFFICULTY: 6, 6 will be made

Dragons blood:
basically petrol.  As burning oil but 1d10 damage and keeps burning if it does 6 or more damage.

DIFFICULTY: 4  6 vials will  be made

Rockets
Like fireworks but more explodey. Use int/savvy bonus to hit with  , do 1d8 damage and set things on fire if they do 6 or more damage.
DIFFICULTY: 4   10 rockets will be made

Dainty Bomb as a bomb but does not have fuse, has a pin , after removing pin , any impact will set it off.

DIFFICULTY :10 6 dainty bombs will be made

Sticky Bomb
as bomb but glues itself to the first thing it hits. Requiring a successful strength and then dexterity check to remove it (as in you pull it off your head but then it sticks to your hand unless you are careful)
DIFFICULTLY :5  4 sticky bombs will be made


Sunkiss
an incendiary bomb. Pull a pin then throw it. Breaks on impact, releasing  expanding cloud of flame Everything within 30 feet takes a d6 damage and is on fire (taking a d6 damage each round

DIFFICULTY 10 2 will be made


Incendiary Rounds
as per normal shot, bolts or arrows , but target is ablaze as well as damaged. (1d6 damage each round)
DIFFICULT: 4 for sling shot 5 for bolts and arrows, 10 for shot.
Makes 10.

Now I could get more complicated and set up a research tree style system, but I needed something from tomorrows game, and this should do.

A research tree would be good , as alchemists don't share research and so if a sponsored alchemist blows themselves up, poof goes all the items they have discovered.
Note: Might half the gold cost for repeat requests.

Note: If this is going to be regular thing in the campaign, I will have to come up with some weirdo creepy research trees that have more in common with this http://middenmurk.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/alchemy.html
than is happening right now.


 EDIT: I'm going to need this
Random alchemists:
name , title, quirk, pet project
1Zues |the shining | mumbles| animating erotic statues
2 Gizzard| the Stinky| Smokes toad skins | discovering additional dimensions
3 Mad Jill| the Mad| Calm, methodical, tidy| destroying all life
4 Zimmer| the chromatic| absurdly dressed| impossible pigments
5 Zug| the fool hardy| looks like a pit fighter| platonic solids
6 Zhuck| the lucky| blind, seeing eye squid | crisis theory
7 Zhillidale| the drunk| made of liquid| destructive resonance
8 Zwan| the unwieldy| arm coming out of his forehead| transhumanism
9 Kieser| The lobotomizer| cruel| eugenics 
10 Prussian | "old smokey"| part bear| talking to insects
11 Jacksticks| "monkey"| paranoid| flying machines
12  Quasar | "shakey"| bipolar| restoring the dead to life

Horror People Asked For

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Requests served like vegemite icecream.

This guy. Tom Fitzgerald asked about a Gorgonopsia. Well they are pretty hard to make any more monstrous  They are basically like a pitbull/lizard/hyena cross. If you want something like a dragon but bestial and mythologically disposable ,  look to these guys. This one here is a Lurking Pulverine. Which means it is surprisingly stealthy and if you look at it and fail a save, you then believe you haven't seen it and rationalize away any evidence of its existence.

Sanctious Lope-Lope

 Patrick Stewart asked about Pituriaspida (and/or one of the Ostracoderms) . (basically really early proto fish which were a helmet with a tail) Which I had surprising trouble drawing (because they already look interesting but not in a dynamic way). Anyway the above and below are the ones I liked the best. The above is avenging angel of a dead long forgotten subterranean God. It fliess and shoots freezy beams.
The below (a glooming) is something that swims around the astral plane and makes fate tunnels when jumps out of the astral plane (to elude predators). A fate tunnel is a zone that can contaminate people spending too much time there, linking them to each other, so coincidence will conspire to intertwine their lives together.

Glooming
 "You are bound together.... by FATE"
"but why? for what great cause"
"Astral Fish Escape Witness"
"So.. for no reason then" -Patrick Stuart

Krytox! and SnickHound

 Krytox! is obviously an transplanar bounty hunter and his dog. (Request from Joey Lindsey).
Krytox! is far far far too old for this shit. He was too old for this shit when the gods were an itch in the loins of a Titan. He is a battered, jaded , and inexorable veteran, relentlessly plodding away at a vocation he loathes, out of sheer bloody mindedness.

Squelch 

 Reynaldo Mandrinan  said I should do something called a Squelch. Which is obviously a hagfish hag. Empowered by squalid magics (even by hag standards) it can secrete enough mucus to form a powerful external body , like an exoskeleton of necrotic fluid. They are given to periods of chronic catatonia and hibernation and their lairs can be mistaken for being abandoned and therefore safe, until the Squelch , rubber-boned emerges from a small, over-looked box in an attic or closet to restate her claim.

Labyrinthodontia

 These are the giant amphibians that ruled the earth before dinosaurs. The immediate monster appeal is from the ones that were like crocodiles but with even bigger mouths, and the ones with a disturbing human looking yet  quadrupedal gait. The big mouthed ones are for making swamps and gladiatorial pits worse and should be given names like Guzzler, Miremaw , Globber-whole, and Hellmouth.  Their character should combine the manic depressive energy of the crocodile and the gross physical proportioning of a toad. A fist with a mouth.
The weird human walking ones should be a cross between Old Ones of Innsmouth and Fey, with certain nights in which they roam and baby swapping and odd offerings hung from trees. The "Cousins".

(reference picture by someone else)

The Eye Phantasmagoric

Mike Evans asked for this. It a giant floating eye , the only part existing in this plane of some godling voyeur. A bug torturing child on a cosmic scale. Attracted to Summonings.   Sometimes it just observes. Other times it makes something to observe.   The baneful magics it inflicts on you are actually just the effects of the godling thinking of you. Its ideas of you are realer than you are.

Gobbledegook

and he asked for this. It is a Gobbledegook. Which of course climbs down your chimney, eats half of your children , and ties your arms and legs together. Its form suggests not something originally human, but something mimicking human form in an alien and obscene caricature. Unfathomably malign. 

Here is some reference pictures I am including because I don't think I did them justice.

Burgess Shale

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Look it's some critters based off critters from burgess shale fossils.

 This one is based off Hallucigenia. It is called a "Gizzery".
It's a cheery old war weapon that can impale sounds on its spines. If someone says all the words in a spells title (Say "Cure" "light" and "wounds") it can immediately cast that spell. The person will not be able to use those words for a week.  Can be dangerously aggressive about maintaining the "aural hygiene"  around its lair.

Quank
(based off a Wiwaxia), was harvested for arrow and spear heads. Is now sullen and paranoid. Can shoot off  its spikes as a random magic arrow or bolt. 

Zag.
Just your typical deluded bioweapon that believes it is from the future and trying to destroy a particular lineage of tyrants.
Based off “Anomalocaris”

Based off Opabinia, Kun are cruel and wanton and sad and reflective.
Former space warping assassins and historians for the Jummerlng, now half-heartedly hire their services out .

Based off trilobites and this here http://falsemachine.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/trilobite-knight.html

Jummerlng are space wizards.
Based off Crinoid(s)

Jummerlng can store "time" as use it as weapon, like "an aging beam" and an "evolution beam" (ignoring how evolution actually works). They are responsible for making all of the above , they think. They kinda went mad due to dabbling into possibility harvesting and lost everything and now are deluded solipsists living in coral towers drifting on the surface of underground lakes.

Rogue Die

Print PDF I have been having trouble thinking about how to do rogue skills.
Like you have a system for them to sneak, and the question is how do you resolve people other than the rogue sneaking? Then oh noes skills can sneak it in and they can be a pain.

Anyway I like how Lamentations of the Flame Princess and 52 pages rules do it, BUT decided not to do it that way. Kinda of.

Skills are done with a stat check. If you do not have a skill it will be a half stat check.
 Rogues additionally will have a rogue die for each skill. This is a d6. There rogue die is rolled at the same time as a stat check. If it gets the value or under you have in it  , you get either a reroll (you must take the new result however ) or a bonus. So if you have a value of 2 in your stealth you would get a reroll or bonus if you rolled a 1 or a 2 on the die.
Rogues start with 6 points to spend at level 1. The skills are Stealth, Sleight of Hand,  Deceit (a mixture of disguise , bullshiting , and charm) , Climb, Acrobatics, Tampering (find/remove/modify traps).
Spending a point firstly gets you the skill (not having a skill means the stat check required for successful use of the skill is done with the stat halved. Some things cannot be attempted without the required skill) , and additional points are the value that you need to roll on the rogue die.
So a first level rogue could have all the skills without a rogue die in them, or have 3 of the skills with a rogue die of 1 , or one skill with a rogue die of 6.

Examples of bonuses : Flamboyantly (affects the morale of npc), Undetectably , Quickly (takes only a moment to perform), Thoroughly (nothing left behind),  etc.

Each time you gain a level you get +1 to either purchase a new skill or increase a rogue die by one.  
A point spend on a rogue die after it reaches 6, starts a new die. So the skill has an automatic bonus or reroll, and you are now rolling the rogue die to see if you have an additionally reroll or bonus. 

I'm still undecided on how to do skills for the other classes. I think it will be something like 3+int modifier and you can choose them in play  ("wait does your guy know how to swim? Umm sure..") if at all.
 There is some good "background" systems floating around which replace skills. Basically you count as having training in something if your background would cover it. I was playing around with making big tables that had your background how much money and equipment you had and what skills. They were not so good.
Although having the background table weighted by if you belonged to the "right sort of people" or not was kinda cool.