More Healing Potions

 A continuation from my previous post on Healing Potions.

I like the idea that if you heal HP that would take you beyond your Max HP you might suffer a mutation that lasts as long as it would take to heal that much HP. That would need a table but I'm sure there is one floating around the web. HP beyond the Max HP could be treated as Temp HP the way a Warlock gets Temp HP with Dark Ones Blessing. Going into battle you can really tank up, but it'll cost you in gold, addiction, and possibly mutation.

I like the idea that the cheaper Healing Potions might cause more problems and if you want the good stuff it's gonna cost you. This becomes a nice way to soak up PC cash. 

 So anyway the more I think about the mutation aspect the more it reminds me of the Slaine comics where mutation was part of his berserker fury.  

New Banner

I love Groo but I've used a fairly dodgy screenshot for a couple of years now and figured it was time to update. So I found an old painting "Bayard Defends the Bridge on the Garigliano" by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux (painted in 1840). I like the painting a lot but wanted to make it a bit more 'me' so I ran it through the Google Flow until I was happy with the results and next thing you know I have a new banner. Hopefully the details aren't too small. 

The "Bayard" in the painting is Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, one of the most celebrated knights in French history.  The painting shows the Battle of Garigliano (1503) in which seigneur de Bayard held a narrow bridge against pursuing Spanish forces and did so long enough for the French army to escape. 

Ironically, Pierre Terrail Seigneur de Bayard did not die at the battle  on the Garigliano. He was mortally wounded in 1524 during the Battle of the Sesia while covering a different French retreat.

 

 

Healing Potions

I read a couple of blog posts about healing potions and thought I'd spew a few thoughts out on the subject. 5E with its short and long rests really made healing potions somewhat unnecessary, that's the nut of the problem. Then if you do swig one you get only a little healing and could roll a 1.

Dojo Darelir, the School of Xenograg the Sorcerer suggests you get one-quarter of a character's Max HP which matches 4E Healing surges.

Nerdwerds thinks a Healing potion should bring you back up to Max HP (but cost a lot).

I like Nerdwerd's solution but I have a different solution. Keep the price the same but if you suck up to many healing potions you develop some kind of immunity to the stuff. Imagine if Healing Potions had a Usage Die that started at Ud20. You roll the die, add your CON modifier and that's how much you heal. You still might get super-low numbers but not every potion is gonna be freshly brewed and sometimes the alchemist might have used a shortcut of putting in Toadstool instead of Mandrake and what are you gonna do. 

So at low level you have a good chance of healing big and that's when your trying just to stay alive. But the more you drink the more likely you roll a 1-2 and when that happens the usage die drops so that your next healing potion only cures Ud12, then Ud10. By the time your high enough level you probably don't need healing potions anyway.

Roll20 Tricks: Session folders

I got tired of searching through folders in Roll20 to find the map I'd prepared. I decided to make a Session folder and every map I felt they might visit was dumped into that folder. I'll drag them out and add new ones as we go. Pretty simple idea really but it made things so much smoother at the table.

Update on the rollable tables. The one player that notices things wasn't there during the last session and the others didn't seem to notice, or at least nobody said anything. I had all sorts of fun sayings from one noble house bashing the players and nobody noticed. Bummer. I'm sure when they do notice they'll love it (as they loved the way I named NPCs when they finally noticed). Jeez, can't be subtle sometimes I guess.

Why I Include Awful Things In My Tabletop RPG Campaigns

Another one from Travis Miller at Grumpy Wizard. He really is one of the few writers that makes me think these days. A lot of others have me wondering if I'm even playing the same game as them when they describe things. 

So this time he's talking about self-censorship more or less and it's a topic I've thought a lot about since I started developing Cults of Shadow for Shadowdark.

See Shadowdark mentions a handful of Gods but doesn't really go into depth so I though that might be a good idea. Go into depth on how the Cults work (not the mythology or anything). So I wrote Cults of Shadow based on that and one of the Goddesses is Gede. Gede is an Earth Mother Goddess of Health, Healing, and Love. It's that Love part that conflicted me. See I saw Gede temples as running hospitals, and to pay for that they run basically holy brothels. They use the Holy Brothels as a power lever as well to get what they want. Don't do what the High Priestess wants, she'll shut down the brothel and we'll see if the crowds don't tear you apart, or the Templars of St Terragnis don't dice you up (they are protective of the Sisters of Gede despite alignment differences).

The sect the Maidens of Love is in the book, but it's barely a paragraph. I felt the power-politics centered on sex could be unique and powerful but I self-censored myself and cut it out. Maybe part of my decision was because this is Shadowdark, it's not my world to start adding that sort of thing into. Still I feel odd about it and may add that to my Goblin Marches product when/if I ever get back to that one. 

I'm not really sure how Awful it is because in the 60s I think the feminists might have applauded the whole idea, but I'm pretty sure modern feminists would hate it. Anyway I agree in principle. Don't self-center. RPG worlds should be complex and have awful things for Player to fight against.

Is an Ordinary Average RPG Session Really So Bad?

Travis Miller at Grumpy Wizard asks that question over at his blog. He doesn't have comments on the post so I'll spew my opinion here, looking back on a year and half long campaign... 

Is an Ordinary Average RPG Session Really So Bad? Its an interesting question. My opinion of average and my players opinion are not always aligned.

I was running Storm King's Thunder and thought things were going well when they all decided why were the Giants there problem? They were bored killing giants and wanted some urban faction adventures. 

I had one session where they were in a villa in Waterdeep and had a series of visitors. Spies, informants. messengers from noble houses. All role play, no combat to be seen. I thought it was gonna be a dull info dump but it turned out to be one of their favorites. It made them feel like big-wigs, important movers and shakers and had their heads spinning on what they could do with the info. What do I know about a dull info dump?

After urban adventuring for a year I granted them some fiefs. Fiefs torn from their enemies control and granted to the the players for a job well done. Did you know Waterdeep had fiefs outside the walls?(1) Well my version of Waterdeep does, I change what I want because Forgotten Realms is a silly place. I had a session a couple of weeks ago that was just a tour of those three fiefs (one player had Noble Background so he didn't get anything) and I let them each pick which one went to which player. Kind of boring stuff but they loved it (possibly because they are power mad). 

My most recent session I felt was uninspired. Just combat because the enemy noble house had not vacated their fief at Daggerford and had to be removed (took that more or less from Dune and Shogun as I don't think western feudalism ever worked that way) and the players loved it(2). 

This is the only group I've GM'd for i know them pretty well, maybe I just know them and can provide what they want(3). Or, maybe they are easy to please and happy to get together for a few hours each week. That's good with me although I'll keep trying my best anyway.

So an Ordinary Average RPG Session is not so bad, and it may not be so bad viewed from the eyes of the players. 

_____________________________________________________

(1) Some Noble Houses are unhappy about Waterdeep moving beyond just a city-state, but that hasn't been explored yet.

(2) The enemies conquered Daggerford on behalf of Waterdeep. The townsfolk want independence, so that's gonna be a problem for the new Baron most certainly.

(3) I guess I thought they just wanted combat, because they clearly enjoy that, but it seems even more they like plotting and the lamentations of their enemies.

Roll20 Tricks: Rollable Tables

I like to prepare in a way that at the table things are easy. That way I can concentrate on the moment. I had ChatGPT create a boss for my party to fight. This was a Holy Prophet of Valkur. One nice thing Chat does is adds a few bullets at the end about tactics. 

Tactics

• Opens with call lightning if outdoors

• Uses control water to dominate terrain

• Preaches even while fighting

The last bullet is where I'm going with this. I think that's brilliant fun, but not something I could ever manage at the table while managing a combat encounter. So I thought maybe if I had a list of quotes I could just go down the list and wouldn't have to come up with stuff on the spot. So I asked Chat for a list. Then I decided I would like the sub-bosses to do this as well, but they would not be Holy so I asked for a second list of losing faith comments. This was great but I'd now compounded the problem of being able to handle this during combat. Then I thought about Roll20 Rollable tables and asked ChatGPT how to use Rollable Tables and got an answer. (I won't repeat it here since it's so easy to ask ChatGPT yourself). Chat provided a
fairly easy to follow one. I worked a bit so that I had two rollable tables (one for Preaching, one for doubting) that would appear as an ability button for every token I selected (something I'll disable once they are done with these cultists) so that even minions might spit out a comment once in awhile. I set it up so that the comments would appear in the chat, under the name of the token. I don't know what I did to add the highlight but its there and I like it.

Takes minimal effort and i'm happy with the results. Hopefully the players will notice and appreciate it. 

The examples of rollable tables from the different modules I've bought were all uninspiring so I ignored rollable tables until now but my eyes are open to possibilities. I can imagine:

• a barroom brawl with a rollable table I click once inwhile that might produce a flying chair (or hobbit) or someone lit on fire in the back. The kind of crazy things that happen in a barroom brawl that don't really happen in a RPG fight. 
• Comments orcs or other foes make during combat, doesn't have to be religious zealots.
• A big pitched battle I imagine I could come up with some fun things as well. 
• Comments folks in a tavern or the streets say, I could have ChatGPT make a list and spit them out into the comments. Could feed out rumors this way.

Lots of possibilities. Curious how it works out in play.