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Showing posts from December, 2017

Spells That Are Fucking Metal: Arboreal Gallows

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<a href="http://verdant-realm-botanist.bandcamp.com/album/collective-the-shape-of-he-to-come">Collective: The Shape of He to Come by Botanist</a> Arboreal Gallows is a song by The Botanist, a weird motherfucker who makes lo-fi black metal with a dulcimer about how plants are going to take over the world and kill us all. It's pretty good. Some of the best- no- THE BEST lo-fi dulcimer metal I've ever heard. Credit where it's due. Arboreal Gallows No./Area of Effect: 1d4 Strangler Roots/round, 100’ radius Duration: Until no living creatures are detected within the targeted area. For ages only plants, fungus, and bacteria grew upon the earth. Cycles and cycles of decay, growth, death, and decay, taking place in languid times before animals came, graceless and savage. The plants remember. Long ago, as roots intertwined, they grew together and gained c

Monster/Class: Reef Elves (statted for DCC)

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Nothing particularly sea-themed about this band except the name, but they're fucking killer live. The Curse That Is by Graves At Sea I created the Reef Elves as part of the 2017 Secret Santicore for a dude who wanted some previously undiscovered aquatic elves for Dungeon Crawl Classics. They're also statted for Lamentations of the Flame Princess as both class and monster here . Reef Elves live below. Some, it is said, have never seen the sunlight, so deep are they beneath the waves.They take many forms, when it suits their purpose: as fish, as half-fish merfolk, or when they take to land, as bipeds nearly indistinguishable from common elves but for the coral growths down their spine, which they are careful to keep hidden. Deep, hidden in dark crevices and the lava floes of mountains long consumed by the sea, they reside in their reefs; they live among the coral and foster its growth. The coral makes their homes, their tools, and their altars. On these altars are th

D30 Rituals of Winter

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Praise the D30, cyclopean chthonic orb, grandest of the dice. Accept this offering of rituals, and blessed be thy rolls. This table has weird winter-flavored customs, celebrations and rituals for pagans or cultures with remnants of ancient beliefs.  Results are in order of escalating weirdness. Depending on what you want, use the following: d10 for fairly mundane/realistic results d20 for weird results d30 for trauma, fear and sacrifice Should you enjoy this table, I have others... Rituals of Spring Rituals of Summer Rituals of Autumn   d30 Rituals of Winter 1 A massive conflagration of whole trees in the town square to drive away blizzards 2 Flaming arrows are launched into fields of dead crops each morning as the sun rises 3 Fires may be fed only with the fat and dung of animals 4 A fire is lit each night on a frozen lake   5 A decorative braided rope made from human hair, animal hyde and natural fibers is hung from every entryway.

Non-Magical Healing & The Medicine Skill (and, of course, Torture)

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Fuck Clerics. Magical healing is bullshit and removes a huge part of the resource management aspect of dungeon crawling. Plus, it practically requires one of the players to choose to be one to maintain the game balance. And why keep such a specific, limited class with its origins in a vampire hunter class? Get rid of that shit and figure something else out that has a little bit more variety than crusaders or Van Helsing. Yeah, I've got something in mind, but that's coming in another post. For now, here's how we deal with non-magical healing.  Recovering HP 1+Con modifier hp per day with bed rest. 1+Con modifier hp per day without bed rest with a successful Con check. Dwarfs recover 1+Con modifier per day without bed rest with no check necessary. They recover 1d4+Con modifier per day with bed rest. They consider taking time off for healing lazy and will not do so unless severely wounded. Negative Con modifiers will cancel out healing or cause loss of hp instea

Spells That Are Fucking Metal: The Violent Sleep Of Reason

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I always liked to play barbarian characters. Rage is cool. It's pretty badass to be able to just turn off everything except your urge to kill. Shouldn't Magic-Users get a chance? Tapping into the primal forces of the universe should allow them to really fuck stuff up... but of course there are risks to abandoning their rationality. Not Meshuggah's best album, but it has some awesome moments. Check out MonstroCity. The Violent Sleep of Reason No./Area Affected: self Duration: 10 rounds As powerful as the reason and structure of man has allowed them to become, atavism is yet more powerful. The wild abandon of nature -and even moreso the destructive strength of the cosmic voids and winds- dwarf what is possible with the pathetic works of humankind. The Violent Sleep of Reason causes the caster to surrender all control over their actions in exchange for the might of chaos. The caster will enter a fugue of rage and destruction for 10 rounds. At the beginning o