GLOG CLASS: HERETIC

 OK Quicksilver, here's the class:

Maybe you're an escaped human sacrifice. Maybe you were a scholarly priest who kept asking questions and exploring forbidden ideas until you lost your faith. Maybe you have seen the one true path and are determined to show the world.

Each level in Heretic gives you +1 to your save vs magic

TEMPLATE A - Disbelieve, Skeptical soul

Skeptical soul - you have advantage on saving throws against cleric spells

Disbelieve - Once per day, you can declare that a magical phenomenon does not affect you. 100% success rate against divine magic. 60% success rate against all other magic.

TEMPLATE B - Blaspheme

Blaspheme - Once per day, you may utter such blasphemies as to call the wrath of a god down upon yourself. Curse a god (e.g Zulin) and you and everyone within 20 feet (god's don't care to aim that precisely) will suffer the god's magical divine wrath (in the case of Zulin, sky execution or a big old lightning bolt). Thus the greater knowledge a heretic has of religion, the more varied effects he can create by calling on different gods (There are a lot of Fire Cults in Centerra , and players are encouraged to make up gods.)

TEMPLATE C - Seeker of Forbidden Knowledge

Seeker of Forbidden Knowledge - Both your Blaspheme and Disbelieve abilities are no longer once per day. They instead draw on a shared pool which is determined by the number of Heresies you know. (If you know 5 Heresies, you would have 5 points to spend) This pool resets at midnight.

 TEMPLATE D - God Slayer OR Gnosis (choose one on gaining D)

God Slayer - Your contempt for the gods has been honed and sharpened to a killing point. Your weapons, whilst wielded by you, can slay immortal creatures. They do not instantly kill them - it just makes it possible to kill them at all.

Gnosis- You know the deepest truth of the gods - they depend on mortals for their power. A weak god is nothing more than a strong spirit, and the difference between a god and a spell is just different ends of a gradient. You can use this knowledge to change a god's behaviour, through a campaign of altering rituals and sacrifices of the mortal followers, based on the types of changes to the god that you wish to make. The DM will run a mini campaign, where you can attempt to complete this goal. The more followers a god has, the harder it is to succeed. If you can successfully sustain your rituals amongst 51% of followers, for a full cycle of the moon, the god will be altered in the manner you wanted.

Centerra Recap, Part 1

 I'm running a pop-up campaign set in Centerra. The journal kicks off as the party successfully escapes from The Lair Of The Lamb. Rodney, a former sailor, ties off a rope around the large horn at the top of the tower, and the intended sacrifices for the Lamb of Vandoh climb down the side of the White Temple, retrieving their rope and retreating into an alleyway. Rodney and Esty, who both ate the glowing mushrooms they found underground, see a green glow to the northern side of the city. Quicksilver Twobells carries the Abacus of Vandoh, a magic abacus looted from the temple.

Akina, who they had rescued in the White Temple dungeon, leads them to her parent's house, assuring them they can lay low there. Upon arrival at Akina's house, alarm horns start to blow from the White Temple rooftops, as the followers of Vandoh have discovered their sacrifices escape, and their godling dead—crushed under a statue of Vandoh that had been pushed over by Quicksilver Twobells and Elizabeth. 

A strange couple answers the door and tells Akina that her parents have moved since receiving a large chest of silver from the White Temple. Akina crumples under the realisation that she was sold to the temple.

Mortarion and Esty take time to comfort Akina, and Elizabeth asks if she knows anywhere in the area they could lay low. Akina says she not sure but thinks there's a stable up the road. The group hurries there, and find the stable abandoned and hide in there. 

In their hideout, after quizzing Akina some more, they realise that none of them have very clear memories prior to waking up in white temple dungeon. It seems that one of the secretions of The Lamb has destroyed vast chunks of their memory.

Mortarion carefully goes out and steals himself an outfit off a clothesline, before going on to buy clothes and food, along with a lamp and a torch, for the rest of the party. Upon returning he is reunited with his trusty dog, Sicarius, who had followed his captors here all the way from his village. (This was the reward for the player who got the most character deaths in the lair of the lamb, a free dog hireling and access to the Really Good Dog class when he brings a new character in.)

The party rests in the stable, having their first proper sleep since they woke up in the sacrificial bowls beneath the White Temple. On awakening, Quicksilver Twobells finds an origami bird, upon unfolding he finds it is a letter from the White Temple.

As a chosen of Vandoh, he should never have been offered as a sacrifice to The Lamb. He should return to the White Temple, all is forgiven, as long as he returns and tells them what happened to the other sacrifices.

Quicksilver and Elizabeth go to a messenger. Quicksilver gets annoyed when the messenger tries to charge him for ink for a message to the White Temple. He then shows the messenger the orb of indulgence he stole from the temple. He then tells the messenger not to talk about their meeting and leaves.

Rodney and Esty go to investigate the green glow that only they can see. They find an enormous Red Temple, and enter to investigate. This is the Temple of Shendormu, the god of fungus, mindlessness, and community. They meet Striata, a priestess of Shendormu, who explains they received the blessing of Shendormu, and may become clerics of Shendormu if they so wish, and follow the divine geas' of Shendormu:

1) Never allow mycelium to come to harm

2) Never second guess

3) Protect and nourish your community (The Red Temple is part of your community)

They sell Striata the last glowing mushroom they had taken from the lair of the lamb. They also find out they are in the city of Lon Barago, and that the Red Temple and the White Temple hate each other.

Meanwhile, Quicksilver Twobells decides to go to the White Temple, unsure about what he was walking into, and what he wanted to do.

Upon showing the origami bird, the high priest is summoned. He asks Quicksilver to follow him, and Quicksilver asks that they not go too deep into the temple. The priest chuckles and says he understands, leading Quicksilver into a small office just off the main chamber of the temple.

Quicksilver and the priest trade questions, Quicksilver learns that Vandoh is depicted as feminine in public, and as masculine in the private, inner cult of the Temple. The priest excited and invites Quicksilver to meet the high priestess. Quicksilver agrees and runs the man through while his back is turned.

Quicksilver calmly leaves, closing the door behind him and exiting the temple.

He reunites with the party just as the temple horns start blaring alarm.

The party makes a madcap dash, with Elizabeth pausing to fire off arrows to keep the guards at bay, racing for the red temple, who send their guards to fight the white temple. While the battle rages outside Rodney and Esty join the religion of Shendormu as clerics, and Mortarion joins as a lay member. Rodney and Esty meet The myconid, who dwells below the red temple and anoint them as clerics by feeding him a piece of his mushroom cap.

Striata gives the party some rations and some directions. If they follow the river they will come to the plant kingdom of Mothmoria. If they cross the river they will come to the ruins of Tau Solen, and Tabernach, where smugglers and thieves hideout.

Godsgrave Finale Recap

The new gods returned from their meeting with death, tired and sore and ready for rest. Esmerelda retired to her lair to study the Wish spell, and Elda Gem took the Milkstar, the artefact milk jug created by Amun Khara, and began cooking wondrous meals.

Namjoon was training and sparring whilst Yugom drank, and Sol and Leorah were standing watch on the divine plane. Meena was winding down in her room when the angel attacked her. A great golden skinned figure of terrible beauty, the angel apologised through tears as he struck her with his sword. Meena fled and raised the alarm as the attack starrted in earnest.

Hundreds of angels were winking into existance around the temple of the well. Sol and Leorah, aided by Ubitysa, defended the well from an endless onslaught. As the rest of the new gods rushed to help them, Leorah called out and told them they had to go and kill the king of the gods now, as the angels would never stop coming as long as he was alive.

The new gods, minus Leorah and Sol, began to climb and fly up the goat-path that lead to the King of the Gods home at the summit of Cloudpiercer Mountain. Above them the stars were blinking out, one by one.

As the night turned into day, the gods saw the landscape below blanketed by the deadly silver mist, and the sky was overcast with dark grey clouds. The new gods saw what they first thought were meteors, falling from the sky, but on closer inspection, they realised they were dragons, falling through the clouds, with trailing lines of mist that they clawed and flamed at madly as they fell to the ground below.

The King of the Gods awaited them at the end of a trail, on the other end of a broken bridge, in an ancient temple of the same style as the well of souls. He was flanked by his bodyguard of angels.

They spoke briefly, and the king admitted his hubris created the fog, and offered them a chance to join him, and they would keep the people of Sorefoot Sanctuary safe as they waited for the fog to pass. He also told them they knew nothing about being gods.

The new gods were unimpressed with his plan to be vassals to a king in a dead land, and told him that it was time for the old world to die and a new world to be made in its place.

The king acknowledged their call to battle, and reached up and plucked the sun out of the sky, placing it in his lantern.

The battle was long and arduous, with the king being a masterful sorceror and warrior, and the lantern producing scalding radiance which took a heavy toll on the new gods. Eventually Yugom wrenched the lantern from the king, and placed the sun back in the sky, burning himself terribly.

Elda Gem used her potent healing magics to keep the gods alive, even bringing them back from the dead on several occasions.

Esmerelda released the imprisoned apocalypse beast, and Amun Khara leapt upon its back and wrestled it to attack their enemies.

Namjoon and Meena dealt death wherever they went. Meena's bow sang and Namjoon's flaming spear struck over and over again.

The King's bodyguard were slain, and the apocalypse beast fell into the fog below.

Eventually the new gods prevailed and struck down Orolt, the king of the gods. He instantly dissolved, leaving only his crown behind.

Looking around, the new gods realised the mist had enclosed the entire world. The site of their battle was a tiny bubble in an eternal sea of oppressive grey fog.

The crown lay between them, and when Amun Khara picked it up, it spoke of how he could slay his friends and become the new king. It was quickly dismissed, as the new gods had been friends for decades.

When the crown's manipulations were stripped away, it repeated two words endlessly: Belief, Sacrifice, Belief, Sacrifice, Belief, Sacrifice, over and over again.

The new gods tried to send message spells and scry Leorah and Sol, but received no answer. They were lost to the fog. They discussed what to do next.

They knew the fog was made up of the remnants of souls that the king had taken too much essence from, just fragments of personality, starved of life and identity.

Esmerelda was the first to act, taking her draconic form and flying into the fog, lowering her defenses. She felt the fog draining away her own divine soul - her life essence.

Understanding oblivion and death better than most, Esmerelda decided to turn back. But her actions inspired Namjoon, who took a leap of faith off the side of the mountain into the fog. Namjoon gave almost all of himself to the fog, sacing only a shred for himself. He landed on the ground in front of the injured and maddened apocalypse beast.

The new gods that remained, Meena, Yugom, Elda Gem and Amun Khara, gathered around the crown, and gave themselves entirely to the fog. They heard a million voices call out to them: "Everything was taken from us. And you have sacrificed yourselves to us willingly, and given it back. And now we return it once again to you, willingly, power returned a thousandfold."

So Meena, Yugom, Elda Gem and Amun Khara, were the first to achieve apotheosis. They destroyed the apocalypse beast and Namjoon joined them, then they appeared, with Sol and Leorah, around Esmerelda.

Yugom said:

"Esmerelda... Let go. Come Home""

And she did. And they were the new gods.

Godsgrave Session 10 Recap

The new gods set out to confront the god of death, who was on the edge of a small village in a mountain valley built around an ancient monastery where nobody would stay dead. The new gods teleported to the edge of the monastery and interviewed a death addict before meeting up with the village elder and discussing issues of the village and the god of death over wasabi tea.

The elder negotiated rescue for those who wished to leave, as the village was entirely surrounded by the mist. The gods began ferrying people through the faerie rings, back to Sorefoot Sanctuary.

In return she told them that the god of death had asked her to pass on that he wished to talk to the new gods.

They travelled to the rice paddies that the god of death was tending, and spoke with him. He confirmed their theories, explaining that the fog was created by the remnants of souls harvested by his new scythe. So much of the soul was taken and given to Orolt, the king of the gods, that all that was left was shreds of memories, accompanied by a strong desire to live, feel, or be whole again. Mortals in the fog died as tiny candles, snuffed by an ocean that desired to feel warmth. Gods survived, but as fractured, mad things.

The God of Death warned them that when he died, his scythe may turn on them, and quickly ceded his mantle to Esmerelda, dissolving into a star of Darkness. Esmerelda instantlty absorbed the star and became The Pyschopomp.

The scythe instantly cracked and fractured, leaving a whole in reality in the form of an enourmous cruel insect. Undead burst from the ground in droves, and the scythe would also reach into the fog, launched spears of the soulmist at the gods.

The gods prevailed, and returned home to plot their war with the king of the gods.

This Rule Sucks: Legendary Resistances

So my players fought The Tarrasque recently and I felt for my bard's player. He spent the first three quarters of the fight burning through the legendary resistances, then cast Otto's Irresistible Dance, which would have been an excellent strategy, if it didn't count as a charm effect, which the Tarrasque is immune to (I have an issue with immunities also, but we'll look into that later). His last few spells were resisted due to the Tarrasque's "advantage on all saves" effect.

My monk's player never landed a stunning strike, The Tarrasque never got stuck in the wizard's Mud to Rock spell, and so on and so forth.

Saving throws in general are just a reversed version of how attacks work in Dungeons and Dragons.
For regular attacks you have:

The attacker rolls a variable attack roll on d20 + modifiers =/> a static defense number (Armor Class)

For saving throws you have:

The defender rolls a variable saving throw on d20 + modifiers =/> a static attack number (Save DC)

Mathematics-wise, they are exactly the same thing. Some players seem to prefer attack rolls as they get to roll the shiny math rocks, and don't like saving throws as someone else is rolling the dice.

So saving throws are just attacks, expressed slightly differently. Now imagine you're attacking an orc and you roll a critical hit. You start to cheer, only to have the GM go: "Nuh-uh, he dodged".

When I was a kid and would play make believe, there was the one kid, you know the one. You shoot him with your laser, he has a laser proof shield. You shoot him with your machine gun, he has a bullet proof shield. You cast a spell on him, he has a magic proof shield. You hit him with a billion trillion infinity double gun, he has an everything proof shield.

That kid grew up to work at Wizards Of The Coast and he designed legendary resistances.

That's not really fair. Legendary resistances are an attempt to keep the big boss fights feeling interesting, if they didn't exist, players would spam their crowd control spells until something took hold, and then bypass the fight. But I always feel like the kid with the everything-proof shield when I use them, as i'm effectively just going "nuh-uh it doesn't work!" when the player has already succeeded.

The other thing i've always noticed with Legendary Resistances, whenever they're used at the table, the other players always console the player who's spell or ability got legendarily resisted.
"No that's good, he's only got two left now!"
"Good job, we've got to burn through these fast."
The very fact that players need consolation for burning through Legendary Resistances is proof to me that they are unsatisfying. Nobody ever needs to be consoled after rolling a critical hit.

So how do we make this more satisfying for players? Two options sort of stand out to me. One is from the truly excellent blog goblin punch which none of you should go look at because it's far too good and I don't need to be living up to those sorts of standards.

My first idea is to simply keep Legendary Resistances, but make them take a round to come into effect. You put the dragon to sleep. For 1 round. Then it wakes up. Simple, but I could see it completely invalidating Legendary Resistance as keeping a boss out of the fight for a whole round multiple times could make the Legendary Resistances effectively pointless.

The other solution is from goblin punch, and it's pretty simple and elegant. He calls them ablative saves, and it works like so: the boss fails a save, but chooses to resist. He then takes a flat 10 or 20 damage. Goblin Punch is an OSR blog, with much lower hit point totals than fifth edition, so I would simply tweak it to:

Legendary Resistance:
When the creature resists a spell effect, it takes damage equal to the spell's level times 10.

This means that you can still burn through with low level spells, but if a high level spell, gets resisted, it provides the consolation prize of a bit of damage.

Godsgrave Session 9 Recap

The new gods were preparing to hunt down and find Bellephon, the god of war, when they were approached by the people of Sorefoot Sanctuary, who were quickly running out of food due to the rapid increase in population from all of the places the new gods had evacuated.

Esmerelda had locked herself away to complete some mysterious arcane ritual and was unreachable by anyone. Leorah, Sol, Elda Gem, and Amun-Khara were all busy defending the well of souls from spiritual assault.

With the mortal population on the brink of starvation, Meena led a magical ritual and taught the smallfolk how to eat dirt and rocks to take some pressure off the food stores. Yugom taught the people to fill their bellies with work, but found that he was just delaying the problem.

Eventually the new gods decided to visit the king of the giants, and barter, trade, or steal milk from his magic cattle. Amun-Khara created an iron flask which could hold a vast amount of milk, and gifted it to the group.

On their way to the Giant King, they stoppped at Namjoon's hometown, as he was anxious to check on his family.

They found the city overrun with fog, and no sign of Namjoon's Kin. Esmerelda scried Namjoon's wife to discover she was leading an evacuation to Sorefoot Sanctuary. This relieved the new gods but also increased the urgent need for food.

Esmerelda appeared to the new gods as a great golden dragon, having completed her true polymorph spell, and flew them to the giant king's castle in the sky. There the new gods gambled with the king, winning an eating contest by eating a sword, losing a poetry contest, and winning a contest of strength through a mixture of strength and cunning by picking a lift were the king would have to bend over, a painful thing as he had swallowed a sword during the eating contest, and were granted access to the magic cows. They filled the iron flask with milk, creating the sacred artifact, The Milkstar.

Elda Gem used the Milkstar to create an enormous feast, and the food shortage crisis was solved, allowing the new gods to turn their focus to the god of war.

Ubitsya had tracked down the god of war, who had rode into the mist to defeat it and apparently vanished. Bellephon had a magic sword, of many wondrous properties, one of which being it could never be disarmed from the wielder. To take the sword, you had to kill the owner. Ubitsya discovered that Bellephon had hidden inside the sword, and given it to a little girl called Lucy.

The new gods tracked down Lucy in the centre of a village full of dead bodies. Lucy told them how her village had been attacked by raiders, and the magic sword had appeared beside her while she was hiding, and she took the sword and killed the raiders.

Lucy then fainted, and the sword unfolded and grew into a strange peacock with a scorpion tail, made entirely of blades.

The new gods fought long and hard, refusing to strike down Lucy, and the cowardly god of war used her as a human shield many times.

They destroyed the blade, killed Bellephon, and Namjoon took on the mantle of the god of war.

Godsgrave Session 8 Recap

The new gods had just killed the Tarrasque and were trying to figure out how to prevent it from resurrecting at dawn. With only the knowledge from old mythology, they were not sure exactly of the mechanics of this, so the exact solution would be a shot in the dark.

As the sun set they began the long and arduous process of butchering the beast, hoping to cut it into small enough chunks that they could fit it through the magical door into a special pocket dimension that Esmerelda had devised to keep the beast imprisoned. They worked through the night led by Yugom, who worked as hard and fast as ten men, lead on by working songs sung by Sol, as Esmerelda began to create the demiplane.

Keeping a few choice peaces for themselves. they got the last part of the corpse through the door as the sun rose. Esmerelda now had a live Tarrasque trapped in a tiny plane only she had access to.

Using her new Tarrasque Eye to scry, Esmerelda looked upon the strange disc inside the ring of mountains called The Crucible to see if the Tarrasque had returned. They saw a new Apocalypse beast growing in the centre of the disc.

They decided that they needed time to rest, as they were spent, before they would face the creature, and they had bought enough time by slaying it initially that they could rest without risking any of the citizens of Ochyro.

When they returned from their rest inside of Sol's Magnificent Mansion, Esmerelda rode alone to a choke point between mountains near the dwarven stronghold, and the rest traveled to the disc of stone to see if they could figure out a way to stop the beast from returning if slain again.

They eventually discovered the disc was the top of a buried cylinder of pure adamantine, the material component in a grand spell created by the archmage Abi Dalzim in ancient history to imprison a more destructive force, and its destruction would unleash a far more destructive force.

Esmerelda trapped the Apocalypse Beast behind a pillar of stone that dwarfed the mountains on eitherside, allowing the citizens of Ochyro enough time to escape, but not before the dwarf mountainhome was destroyed.

They returned to Sorefoot Sanctuary to work with their spoils and plot revenge against Rimblatook for being foiled by him so long ago.

The Tarrasque skin and teeth were given to Amun Khun to see if he could make something of them at his forge.

They discovered Rimblatook had taken control of a city, patrolled consantly by a massive monitoring zeppelin, and built himself a massive, rambling, labyrinthine trap filled castle while he "experimented" on the city's population, which largely consisted of launching people into the fog and turning gnomes and halflings into flesh golems to "save" them from the fog.

Ubitsya discovered the name and address of one of the zeppelin's pilots, as well as one of the architects that had helped build Rimblatook's trap maze.

Their first plan was to use Sol's faerie rings to travel as close to Rimblatook as possible. Unfortunately Rimblatook had been spying on them and had learnt about Sol's Faerie magic.

The party teleported directly on top of a pressure plate built in the centre of an artificially grown mushroom ring, and the floor gave out beneath them, dropping them towards a pit of acid. Esmerelda used her magic to teleport everyone back home, and quickly scried on the room they had just left. She saw great gouts of flame and enormous spiked plates mashing into the acid pit, and when she scried Rimblatook, he was busy scrying as well.

Sol then decided to use his faerie rings to travel to the second closest ring to Rimblatook, and the new gods traveled on foot to enter the city from the outside. After dismissing the idea of entering disguised, they quickly changed their minds when they saw wanted posters depicting them plastered throughout the city.

They attempted to bribe information out of the architect, who Rimblatook had blinded and maimed to prevent him working ever again. Their attempts did not go well, as Sol was overrun with a desire for mischief, and turned himself into a giant owl before picking up the architect and flying out of the city.

The zeppelin took note of this, and began chasing the owl, charging a formidable looking lightning rod on the hull. As alarms rang throughout the city, the rest of the gods gave chase to their trickster friend.

Sol had not anticipated the zeppelin, and the architect was killed in a blast from the lightning cannon.
The zeppelin was hurting Sol badly, and the gods were unsure of how to face it until Leorah called heaven's fire from above, setting the zeppelin alight with a flame strike.

Esmerelda, exasperated from the trickster's antics, conjured the architect's soul and bound it in a cage so they could quiz the architect from beyond the grave.

They raced through the now panicking city, and used a secret tunnel to bypass Rinblatook's maze. They found the gnome god of traps sitting atop an enormous golem, flanked by more automatons and ringed with covering ballista fire.

The fight was somewhat anticlimactic, as Sol flipped from making their lives to diffcult to easy, whispering in the ballista crew's ears and turning them against Rimblatook, and when Rimblatook tried to escape, Yugom simply outran him and slit his throat with little fanfare.

Meena volunteered to become the god of the little folk, and the group decide to bring back the divine essence of invention to be given to Amun Khun.