Planescape - The Jinkskirts

October 10, 2016, 8:15 pm

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There is this weird period of change occurring in my little world right now. Things are going great for me, but some of the people in my life have some really terrible things happening. This tumult led to a few weeks of no Planescape.

We played at Jessie's home, which is far away and shrouded in utter darkness. It was an utter miracle that I found the place. But I did, and bah gawd we played us some D&D.

Terrible Prep Work: My preparation sucked for this one. While writing that Guide to Planescape Factions, I kept having campaign ideas. I'd stop and add them to my ongoing planescape plot file. The problem there is that there were a few days between that brainstorming and the time I actually assembled my plans for the adventure, so I had a mountain of gibberish to sort through and precious little time to do it in. That's why I always try to do the bulk of my prep work within 48 hours of the session

Downtime Before Hellbound: We finished the big Infinite Staircase story and now we're going to have a few weeks of Sigil stuff before we start the Hellbound boxed set adventures. What I want to do is to reconnect the characters to the city, remind them of all the cool stuff they've done, and most of all I want to demonstrate the ramifications of the things they've done.

I think that's the key to any campaign - you have to think out the logical consequences of the actions of the characters. Everything they do has some sort of ripple effect and when you demonstrate that, it makes them feel that every decision they make is important.

Graz'zt the demon lord

My loose plan for the next few sessions:

• (Tonight) Do downtime business stuff, develop the Tenebrous connection.
• Have a session in the Great Dismal Delve - the group has been given estates in the land of the earth genies.
• Lay the groundwork for Hellbound - the heroes are going to fight on the side of the devils, but they have a secret mission.
• Run a session where their rakshasa enemy Raja Khan enacts a nefarious plan that involves the Doomguard faction.
• Have Shemeska the Marauder return to the city. She went into hiding when her plan to blackmail the heroes backfired.
• Maybe do a session where Graz'zt tries to annex the abyssal lair owned by the group's friend, Bazuuma.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Half-Dabus/Half-Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Convivia Kettle (level 2 Priestess)

The heroes own a cluster of buildings known as "Deadbook Square."

The group returned from the Ethereal Plane where they had defeated the Iron Shadow. They rested for the night.

Bidam is a Pain Router: Throughout this session, I did this thing where Bidam felt weird pain. The Lady of Pain is the source of all pain in the multiverse and Bidam is now one of her "backup servers," so to speak. Or maybe her surge protector? Every day, a rusty blade will grow out of his body, and then it will rust and fall off. Obviously, this will be painful.

The only way to stave off this pain is to live by his belief, which is "Hit it and Quit it." Bidam hasn't quite figured out what is going on, but he's close.

Tour of Sigil: Theran's NPC girlfriend Convivia Kettle is now a Priestess, the custom class by Jason Thompson. She took the group on a ride around the lower ward of Sigil in the iron carriage of Nocticula, a thing they found in the plane of Acheron a number of sessions back.

I used this ride so the group could be reminded of the people and places in the city. I made sure to include Unity of Rings and Rule of Three, as I'm going to be doing a whole thing with them over the next 10 or 15 sessions.

I had the group run into my alternate universe waffle crew (the heroes of Dice, Camera Action). They really get a kick out of Evelyn's southern accent. In my campaign, Evelyn is a paladin of the Raven Queen, not Lathander/the Morninglord.

The waffle crew were in the middle of an adventure. The group decided to help them with it. They headed to the Beastlands, busted in to an ancient evil temple and looted some magic items.

With that done, the group split.

Bidam

• Bidam reconnected with Fall From Grace, who had been trapped in the Abyss for a time.
• They went to the headquarters of their faction, the Sensates.
• Secret Mission: Fall From Grace was given a secret mission from the Factol. She couldn't tell Bidam what it was. I can tell you: She's going to use her shapechange power to spy on The Fated. The Fated play a huge role in the upcoming Faction War adventure.
• Bidam's Dark Pact: Bidam recorded a sensory stone and had a weird vision of the Orcusword reforming. Last session, he'd made a dark pact with Tenebrous. Bidam knows a ritual to turn himself into some sort of undead monstrosity.
• Sensory Tubes: Bidam checked out these new Sensate sensation tanks. If you go in them, ten minutes feel like a day. You can learn about yourself. He saw a tiefling woman about to get in one. He seduced her and they got in a tank. His Lady of Pain pains went away.
• Student: Bidam teaches a class for the Sensates. He missed a week and he has one student named Mulky who is a sort of internet fan of the Bidam. Mulky asks lots of questions about story inconsistencies/continuity gaffes in Bidam's sensory stones and Bidam tries to humor him.
• Family Time: Bidam went home and ended up having to go to Bazuma's realm of Burningwater. She's a demon lord and he has a kid with her - a little baby abyssal dragon. If you remember, last session little Pyranicus was slain. When a demon is slain outside its home plane, it appears back in its abyssal home, alive. Pyranicus obviously was traumatized by this. Bidam had to have a weird little talk about dying with Pyranicus. Once Pyranicus was cheered up and outside, Bidam decided he wanted to make another baby with Bazuuma. Jessie thinks it would be cool to have an army of dragon children.

Iggwilv the Witch-Queen

Theran

Theran was given an offer to be an apprentice of Iggwilv, the Witch Queen! He accepted. There are two other apprentices: His old sidekick Selinza the cat lady, and Landerbold the Dandy, an arcanaloth.

Theran went through three wizardly tests:

1. Concentration: He had to maintain concentration on a spell for 10 rounds while her familiars tried to disrupt it.
2. Polymorph: He got into a polymorphing duel with her arcanaloth apprentice, Landerbold the Dandy.
3. Demon Summoning: He had to summon and bind a demon (using these unearthed arcana rules).

When planning this sort of thing, it's easy to forget to plan for failure. If Theran fails one or two of these challenges, what does that mean? I had decided that each success sent him up the apprentice totem pole. One success meant that he was at the bottom. Two successes meant he outranked Selinza. All three meant he was above Landerbold and he would be Iggwilv's top apprentice.

He failed the Concentration test but passed the other two. He did really well on the demon summoning, successfully casting off of the scroll and then forcing the demon to obey him with an opposed charisma check. The demon was a solamith, of course. My favorite!

Theran's Task: Research old dusty tomes to find out everything about Codricuhn that he could. Codricuhn is this 4e demon lord who eternally climb up a abyssal chasm. There are six powerful demons that live in the storm around him Iggwilv wants to try to control one or all of them if possible.

She also revealed to him that Graz'zt wants to try to annex Bazuuma's Realm. Graz'zt currently rules three abyssal layers (his "triple realm" of Azzagrat) and he's always looking for more. There was an incubus a while back that had scanned Theran's mind and learned everything about Bazuuma. The incubus betrayed Iggwilv and sold the info to Graz'zt.

Festhall War

Faction Focus: Once all that stuff was done, the heroes reassembled and we played through a little scenario. I'm trying to focus on one faction per session. I want the group to be familiar with the factions so that the Faction War makes sense to them. Planescape is awesome, but there is a heck of a lot of lore to soak in. I really want to take my time and let them slowly absorb the ins and outs of all of the main components of the setting.

So for this session, I used the Sign of One. They have the power to imagine things into existence. How cool is that? The heroes own a brothel and they have one "star" employee. Another brothel has forced a member of the Sign of One to imagine her into existence. This fake/clone is now working at that brothel for a slightly lower price.

Fun Fact: The Planescape slang name for a prostitute is "Jinkskirt." What's a male prostitute? I'm going to go with "Jinksock."

The group did some serious investigating, including interrogating their star employee. The employee has a tragic backstory - her parents have this rare magical ailment and she's doing this work to pay for a cure.

Misfortune Devil

Devils: The enemy brothel is in Hellgate, the devil district of the lower ward (Hellgate is briefly mentioned in Faction War). I've wanted to use the Pathfinder "Whore Queens" for a long time, so this brothel is really all about signing souls over to Ardad Lili, The End of Innocence.

Basically, customers come in and if they like, instead of paying gold, they can sign over their souls. The Sign of One guy signed his soul over to them, but since that time he developed buyer's remorse. The devils agreed to give him his soul back if he agreed to imagine a duplicate of the "star" employee into existence. He has to maintain concentration to do this, so it's very stressful. He is also wracked with guilt, because more people are coming in and signing over their souls.

So the group comes to this brothel and I had cooked up some passion devils (from the 4e Monster Manual 3) with goofy perverted gimmicks. I'll spare you the details. One of these ladies was named "Bar Excellence." I don't know why, but that name makes me laugh. Her last name is pronounced "ek-say-lawn-suh."

I had no idea how the group would handle this situation. Stealth? Trickery? All-out assault? That's the fun of D&D! They, of course, did something unexpected. They each decided to go upstairs with a pleasure devil. They paid gold rather than handing over their souls despite some expert salesmanship.

Both heroes ended up passing out. A troll bouncer woke them and told them to leave. Bidam saw that he had an armband glued to his wrist. It had been attached with sovereign glue - a magic adhesive that is almost impossible to remove.

The person who runs the brothel is a gambling devil (also from the 4e MM2). While Bidam was passed out from all the sweet loving, he put this item on Bidam:

• Solidarity Bands: When two different creatures where these, they share damage evenly when they are on the same plane. An armband can't be removed until the wearer dies, or someone casts dispel magic.

The misfortune devil has a troll chained up in a room wearing the other band. The troll regenerates! So the devil can stab the troll and Bidam takes half of the damage. Then the troll regenerates and the bad guy can do it again.

This was done as an "insurance policy" to make sure the heroes didn't interfere with his little scheme.

Boy, was Bidam mad about this. The group skulked about and found the Sign of One guy. They learned about the scam. They felt bad for him and told him they'd try to find his infernal contract and rip it up.

The group got into a fight with another troll bouncer who wouldn't let them come back into the brothel. Theran suddenly blew the troll away with a fireball right in the open.

That's where we had to stop! Next time, we'll wrap that up and go back to the Great Dismal Delve. I mined all that cool lore from the Plane of Elemental Earth, I want to put it to use.

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Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 25 - Curse of Strahd

October 11, 2016, 8:38 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Codex of the Infinite Planes

≪ Previous: Planescape - The Jinkskirts

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 Title: I Dream of Vistani

• You can watch this episode on Twitch here.
• I have a Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide here.
• You can buy Curse of Strahd here.
• Check out the Dice, Camera, Action section on reddit.

We had a week off after TwitchCon and now Dice, Camera, Action resumes! Check out this Strix doll that Holly made:

The eyes glow in the dark. How awesome is that? Where did she learn to do this stuff?

Nateless in Seattle: No Paultin again this week. He's sick. Is he still on the show or what? He's missed probably half of the episodes of the series so far. I think this episode was meant to be Paultin-centric.

It's funny how that works. I ran The Shackled City adventure path (using 4e rules, so.. yeah) and I had this one player who rarely showed up. I thought I could lock him in by giving his character a cool crystal staff called Alakast that was important to the plot. What happened is that he stopped playing and I had to awkwardly shift Alakast over to another party member.

Wiggling: Chris is wearing a wig. He was going to wear it as part of his Strahd costume at TwitchCon but it was too hot.

Leveled Up: The heroes are now 7th level. Strix has her first fourth level spell - dimension door. She swapped out alter self for enlarge/reduce. She wants to shrink Strahd, which is a hilarious idea. She took see invisibility too. Nice!

Dee is a "wall of meat." She has 112 hit points.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(Erika) Dee - Human Fighter
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer

Last Time: The group went to Van Richten's Tower and Paultin got into a scuffle with Van Richten. Witches attacked and Diath got beat up pretty bad by a broom. Strix slaughtered all of the bad guys.

The heroes check out the severed vistani head in Van Richten's chest. Van Richten says he casts speak with dead on it. The head belongs to a vistani named Yan.

Van Richten wants to turn the Strahd doll into a magical receptacle. They are going to need the blood of a vistani to make this happen.

Anna trolls Chris by asking Paultin for a song. Chris evades. The group rests. Diath is on the ball! He asks Dee to keep an eye on Paultin's shadow. The night passes without incident.

The wolf hunter NPCs, Zoldar and Yevgeni, are outside. They've been outside all night! They had been wounded during the witch battle. One of them is dead!

Zoldar demands that Van Richten bring him back to life. Hmm... will Diath use his power? Wait, I just remembered, he needs a 1,000 gp diamond to use his resurrection power, so... no. Van Richten says that Yevgeni can't be brought back - Yevgeni didn't have a soul. He was a soul shell (see Curse of Strahd page 25).

Evelyn doesn't believe that some Barovians don't have a soul. The group offers to bury Zoldar.

The adventurers loot the dead witches. The man-witch has a potion of polymorph on him. Strix loots a witch hat. It has three snails on it. She asks Dee to name them, then immediately eats one. Yeargh. I think Slooey and Gooey are still alive but I doubt they'll survive the episode.

Ezmerelda's Wagon

Oh no. They're going to check out Ezmerelda's wagon. I've been waiting for this encounter for a long time. This could be really bad (see page 168). Oh geez... Diath is messing with the door. Wait... Strix checks for traps. Nice! Chris points out she'd need the detect magic spell to really know if there's a trap. Oh no.

Diath checks the lock. The whole group is right there by the door. He rolled well, but he doesn't detect the real trap inside. He opens the door to the wagon.

Inside the wagon, there is a wire looped around the doorknob. It snaps. A flask drops to the floor and bursts into flames, which ignites 100 more of these flasks lining the wagon walls. The entire wagon blows up and there's a massive explosion!

Get ready.. 55 damage if they fail their save. Looks like the whole group made their saves! Strix is a tiefling so she only takes half damage from fire. Not too bad!

The NPCs fare poorly. The wolf hunter dies in the explosion and Van Richten is down! Evelyn heals Van Richten with la on hands, but she only gives him 10 units of well being because she doesn't really like him.

Chris goes into excruciating detail on all the stuff that was destroyed. The group is quite perturbed at all the loot they missed out on. There was even a chicken in there. Now it's dead.

In case you are wondering, here's some of the stuff that got burned:

• A wooden chest containing a gold holy symbol of the Morninglord (worth 100 gp), three vials of holy water, three vials of perfume, two vials of antitoxin, and a spyglass
• Two spell scrolls (major image and remove curse)
• A map of Barovia (showing all the locations marked on the Curse of Strahd map of Barovia)

Strix finds a page Van Richten's journal. Strix reads it out loud. What an invasion of privacy.

Here's the short version:

1. Vistani abducted Van Richten's son, Erasmus.
2. They sold him to a vampire named Baron Metus. 
3. His son became a vampire spawn, and Van Richten had to kill him. 
4. Metus killed Van Richten's wife in retaliation. 
5. Van Richten killed Metus and became a vampire hunter.
6. Van Richten is cursed by a vistani. He brings doom to all that he befriends.

Does this mean that Dee is doomed?

Van Richten

Van Richten says that this will be his last vampire hunt. He's old. Evelyn thinks everyone should hold hands and sing a hymn.

Van Richten insists that they rest. He heals the adventurers to full hit points. The day goes by, and at night the group goes to sleep. Diath is taking watch and... there's something outside.

After a lot of amusing panicking among the characters, something slips an envelope through the floorboard beneath them. I think this is the Strahd invitation. Yup! Strahd wants them to come to the castle.

Van Richten tells them not to go. Diath is pretty sure that the vampire who delivered the invitation was Ezmerelda.

The group goes back to sleep. The group needs vistani blood.... Diath almost cuts Paultin in his sleep to get is blood. He takes the hag pin and immediately starts having visions. The hags from the windmill are urging him on. He gets weirded out and decides not to do it.

The next day, Van Richten wakes up and says he had a prophetic dream. The group needs to go find Arabelle, the missing Vistani girl. He says that Dee and Paultin need to stay at the tower. Van Richten says that Paultin can not be trusted. They leave on foot. The horses are staying with Dee.

Uh oh. Dee's alone. Paultin's shadow creeps up behind her! She fails her perception! We don't find out what happens next.

The group goes to the lake. They see a guy in a rowboat. Evelyn flies up to him. He has a burlap sack that looks like there is something in it - a little girl. The guy is about to chuck her into the lake!

Strix dimension doors onto the boat and brings Diath with her. That's where we stop!

Overall

This was a very good episode. Some might say that this one is skippable because there were no major plot advancements, but to me this is worth seeing just because it's a lot of fun all the way through. Everybody was in a great mood and the whole thing gelled really well.

When you have a good campaign going, it almost doesn't matter what happens in the game because it is fun just to see everyone interacting and joking around.

Character Art: Each character is very well-rounded in this campaign. If Force Grey could get professional art of their heroes, I don't see why we can't get official art of the waffles. If somebody ponied up for a piece of art depicting Chris Hardwick's joke character from that show, then in my opinion it is a grave injustice not to do the same for this group.

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Codex of the Infinite Planes

October 14, 2016, 3:59 pm

≫ Next: A Guide to Nocticula, Demon Lord of Assassins, Darkness and Lust

≪ Previous: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 25 - Curse of Strahd

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I was planning out my Planescape campaign and I decided to work in an incomplete fan-made adventure about the Codex of the Infinite Planes (it is free and really nice). I read up on everything I could find about the codex and I'm going to compile it all right here. This should be a nice starting point for you if you want to use this item in your campaign.

Here's the weirdest thing about this magic item. The best material by far was made by a fan and is not official. But you should definitely check it out because it is awesome and fits the lore perfectly. I'll include that info at the bottom of this guide.

The Essential Information

Here's the basic information you should know about the Codex of the Infinite Planes:

• It is as big as a bookcase and very heavy.
• It has an infinite number of pages. 
• It has the ability to take you to any plane.
• It gives you spell-like powers.
• Just opening the codex can kill you and reading it can make you go insane. Every time you read a new page, there is a cumulative chance that you are hit by some kind of disaster.
• The Codex is sentient and reaches out to people in their dreams.
• The Codex is older than seemingly everyone. Even the gods don't understand it.
• In most editions, it is up to you to pick what spells it can give the reader as powers. In most editions, the codex offers transportation spells and summoning/banishment magic.

AD&D 1st Edition

The codex actually first appeared in one of the white box supplements and thus is one of the oldest items in the game. Here in the 1e DMG, we get basic details. It is heavily tied to Greyhawk lore. 

We learn that it is sometimes known as "Yagrax's tome" and that an archmage named Tzunk got his hands on it. The Codex caused the destruction of the isles of woe. Other factoids:

• A High Wizard priest of the Isles of Woe used it to dominate the region.
• It has "99 damned pages."
• If you read it, you have a 99% chance of meeting a terrible fate. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
• The pages each take you to a different plane or alternate universe.
• "The work will instantly destroy any character under 11th level of experience who touch it..."
• If you're 11th level or higher, you need to make a saving throw to use the powers of the codex.

Like most of the items in the 1e DMG, it is up to you to pick the spells and powers inside the codex. It has 16 spells total, the highest of which are level 6.

AD&D 2nd Edition

There's not a lot of codex art out there

The Codex is detailed in the book of artifacts. The codex gets a full page and more details are added:

• It is so big that two strong men can barely lift it.
• The cover is obsidian and the pages are thin lead.
• There is a lot of writing in unknown languages. "No matter how many pages are turned, there is always one more."
• The powers of the codex are triggered by reading it.
• It can open a portal to any plane or world.
• It has no table of contents/index.
• Once per month, it can summon a greater fiend to serve you for 24 hours.

Pick Your Powers: Once again, the powers of the codex are up to you. In this book, there is a massive section full of types of magic item powers. They are really great. For the codex, you choose four minor powers and four major powers off of the lists.

Curse: Every page read, whether useful or not, has a 1% cumulative chance of triggering an awful fate such as madness or a "10-mile radius clouds of deadly poison (no saving throw)". We also learn that "No character can read more than 99 page before doom befalls them."

They give a few possible ways to destroy it:

• Every page of the infinite pages of the codex must be read.
• One page of the book opens a portal onto the book itself, wiping it out of existence.

Iuz the Evil

In Iuz the Evil, we learn a little more about Archmage Tzunk, who was mentioned in the 1e DMG. It says here that his body was sundered into a hundred parts to thwart attempts at resurrection. Did the fire genies do this? In Greyhawk, there is a guarded tomb that contains only the hands of Tzunk!

• The tomb is guarded by "great golems with special powers such as paralysis, petrification and worse..."
• The place is guarded with magical traps.
• The hands will animate and serve whoever frees them from the tomb. The hands will want to go find the rest of Tzunk's body.

Dragon Magazine - The Plane of Truth

This was a collection of articles in issues 203 and 204. I think it was meant to hype up Planescape. It mentions the codex a bit in story form. This article gives an entire new element to the codex. It reaches out to people in their dreams and siphons the life out of them. Their life force keeps the codex powerful.

Short version: The codex reaches out in your dreams and for the next few days you are compelled to write down the encrypted image. One guy kept waking up new tattoos on his flesh. After a few weeks of this, you become a lifeless husk.

In the story, a guy named Fallendor gets sucked in, but he is able to escape somehow by taking over the body of the next guy to get sucked in. That second guy, Ambran the Seeker, mentions that he knows he is going to teleport to "Hruggek's Realm" once he finishes his transcription, but he can't stop.

Hruggek's Skulls: I decided to look up Hruggek in Monster Mythology. He's a bugbear god. He lives in pandemonium and is surrounded by the severed heads of his conquered opponents. The heads have magic powers and the book talks about them:

"How this has come to be is hard to explain; it would need magical powers well beyond Hruggek's capacity to create such artifacts. This suggests that some deity with major wizardly powers has some form of agreement with Hruggek, although the nature of this - and who the other deity might be, and what that deity has to gain - is entirely unknown."

I don't know if the codex is involved with Hruggek, but I figured I'd throw it in there.

Secrets of the Lamp

There are a few paragraphs about Tzunk. Tzunk tried to conquer the City of Brass using the codex. He was defeated by four million fire genies and he was brought before the sultan. The area of the city that he destroyed became a race course during his attack.

D&D 3rd Edition

The codex is in the Epic Level Handbook. Here's some new developments:

• "Anyone opening the codex for the first time is utterly annihilated with a destruction spell..."
• When you spend a day studying the codex, you can learn one of its powers. You must also make a save or go mad.

They finally list some powers! Each of them can be cast at will:

• Astral projection
• Banishment
• Elemental swarm
• Gate
• Greater planar ally
• Greater planar binding
• Plane shift
• Soul bind

When you activate a power, you need to make a check or else you must roll on the catastrophe chart. It's pretty insane. You might get hit with an earthquake or summon 1d3+1 balors.

The Adventure: There is actually an adventure in this book that deals with the codex. The adventurers need to go to a wizard's tower in the plane of fire.

There's a group called the Gleaners who have long sought the codex of the infinite planes. We learn that the codex was stolen by a "retriever" named Regalid. Regalid stole it from Schaethreth, an infernal. Schaethraeth has owned the codex for 100 years and can actually sense it when he is near it.

Regalid is hiding out in a wizard's tower near the city of brass. The codex "stands on the floor along one wall, nearly filling the area of a normal bookcase."

Living Greyhawk

Living Greyhawk was an "adventurers league" kind of thing that was set in Greyhawk. I'm not sure whether or not some of the stuff "counts," but if it's cool or useful, it "counts" to me.

They had a series of linked adventures called "Ether Threat." It is actually set in the area where the Isles of Woe were, which is the place mentioned in the 1e DMG. Here are the adventures an brief highlights of what they're about.

Isles of Woe:

• We learn that the wizard-priest who destroyed the isles of woe was named Alcanix.
• Alcanix used the codex to summon the Ethers, creatures that devour everything and leave just rock and dust behind.
• The Ethers were sent to the Ethereal Plane by a band of brave mage-priests.
• When Vecna was a mortal, he might have lived on the Isles of Woe.

Into the Dying Lands: The heroes go to a shrine of the mage-priests and the group learns about Tzunk's life and exploits.

Return to the Isles: The group goes to one of the Isles of Woe to find a sword that will lead them to the mysterious Yagrax.

• It was Yagrax who killed Alcanix for summoning the Ethers.
• Yagrax went insane and declared himself the ruler of the last isle.
• The sword Malthindor was made specifically to slay Yagrax.

Sepulcher of the Wizard King: The heroes go to Yagrax's Tomb to summon his spirit. The group needed his spirit, because only Yagrax could use the codex without going insane

Endgame: Yagrax possesses the body of an NPC and leads the group to the planes to banish the Ethers for good. Then Iuz shows up and steals the codex.

Iuz: In a later Living Greyhawk adventure, Iuz used the Codex to become a lesser deity. It is hard to find info on the later adventure series that involved the codex.

D&D 4th edition

In Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, we get the 4e version of the codex. We get a few little nuggets:

• It is the size of a small table.
• The symbols in the book use the language of creation, the same language runepriests use.
• It was used in eons past to transport armies from one plane to another.
• Apparently somebody once used the codex to accidentally summon "Garniax, the Indestructible fiend" and then they had to use the codex to send the demon back to the Abyss.

Powers: Once per day you can choose a location.. anywhere.. and you and your group appear there. You could even just say you want to go to "a king's treasure room" and it will take you there.
It can return creatures back to their plane of origin.

Maldin's Version of the Codex

This site has a giant entry on the codex that is really good. The author is Denis Tetreault, who wrote dragon magazine articles and apparently was very heavily involved in Living Greyhawk. This site greatly fleshes out the codex and is, in my opinion, the best resource for those looking to use the codex. Some stuff we learn:

• If the book is left open for a time, it will close and latch itself when nobody is looking.
• The cover might be comprised of the same material that crystal spheres from Spelljammer are made of.
• The metal pages cannot be written on in any way.
• The codex is older than any of the known gods.
• It is sentient, but it is so alien that nobody can grasp it.
• It reaches out to people in their dreams and slowly drains their life force. This fuels the incredible power of the codex.

Dangers of the Codex: When you open the book, you must make a saving throw. Fail means you lose up to 11 character levels! Success means that you are attuned to the book. Then you make a second save. Fail this and you go insane.

As you read through the codex, you will trigger various curses. You'll also drain energy sources nearby - fires go out, the temperature drops, etc.

The Great List of Names: Pages that list every person that has ever attuned to the book. There have been only 12 people to do so in the last 3,000 years.  It lists their truename and how they are remembered by history. If you open it, you will find your name at the bottom of the list.

This site actually lists the last 12 names. It includes Yagraz, Tzunk and Zagig! Further down, he goes into detail about each one.

He made his own version of the codex with a set of powers. The powers are all travel, knowledge and banishment type stuff. Here's some of the special things it can do:

• Summon and bind planar creatures.
• Create portals.
• You can actually break off pieces of the planes.
• Communicate directly with Gods and demon lords.
• Create extradimensional spaces.

To me, it's not even close. This is the best, most useful version of the codex by a million miles.

The Codex Adventure

That brings us to the Codex of the Infinite Planes adventure!

The adventure is meant to span from 1st level all the way up to around 20th. I'm going to run a condensed version of it, just hitting the main plot points. The author took all of the lore and combined it, and added all sorts of Planescape stuff. What he's done so far is really cool.

It is unfinished as of now. The whole back half is full of stats and it has a complete 5e version of the codex. It is basically a compilation of all the best ideas of the older versions.

If nothing else, you could get this for the tons of 5e stats and converted magic items. It's free so if you have any interest at all you should download it.

Links

Maldin's Greyhawk version of the Codex
The Codex of Infinite Planes adventure
More details on the Ether Threat series of adventures

A Guide to Nocticula, Demon Lord of Assassins, Darkness and Lust

October 15, 2016, 11:37 pm

≫ Next: Planescape - The Abyssal Undersump

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Codex of the Infinite Planes

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Today I'm switching it up a little bit. I'm doing a guide to a Pathfinder entity - sort of. I'm going to try to give you an outline to work from if you want to use her in your campaign at some point in the future.

I am not too familiar with Pathfinder. If I missed something, please let me know and I'll add it in.

Warning: Pathfinder is a little more "adult." There's a lot of explicit and disturbing stuff in this one, so click away if you think it might bother you.

I'm using material from

• Book of the Damned Volume 2 - Lords of Chaos
• Wrath of the Righteous Part 4 - The Midnight Isles
• And a whole bunch of D&D books

The Essential Information

• Nocticula is meant to be the replacement for Malcanthet in the Pathfinder multiverse.
• She kills other demon lords.
• In her abyssal realm, there is an island for each major entity she has assassinated. There are currently 30 islands.
• Her brother is Socothbenoth, demon lord of perversion.
• She is also a demigod and she has a plan to become a full-fledged god.
• Shadows and shadow demons serve her. She killed their master.
• She has a number of consorts, including Juiblex.
• Nocticula has been mentioned in numerous D&D products, including the AD&D Monster Manual 2.

The Real Life Origin of Nocticula

AD&D Monster Manual II

There were a lot of demon lords that were named in D&D products but never fully developed. Nocticula began as a name on a list in the AD&D Monster Manual II, as far as I can tell. Her name apparently is taken from some real life source.

The Origin of Paizo: If you are newer to D&D, you might not know this. Paizo is the company that makes Pathfinder. Originally, Paizo were in charge of making Dungeon and Dragon Magazine during the 3rd edition era. I regard the Paizo issues as the best in the history of either publication. They used the lore well, added new creations and packed each issue with stuff that was actually useful.

Eventually, the companies parted ways. Paizo took advantage of the 3rd edition OGL, an arrangement that allowed other companies to make D&D products if they paid a licensing fee. A lot of D&D concepts are usable in the OGL, including many of the demon lords.

Paizo decided to start a new monthly product called Pathfinder and it has been a massive success that continues to this day.

Pathfinder fleshed out some of the demon lords, Nocticula being one of the big ones.

D&D 3rd edition Fiendish Codex

There's an old thread on the paizo forums where someone tries to merge the Pathfinder and D&D versions of the abyss. James Jacobs chimed in. James is the guy who wrote the classic 3e Demonomicon of Iggwilv articles and he does a lot of stuff for Pathfinder.

He shed some light on all of the real life thinking that went into Nocticula. Here's some quotes that I thought were interesting:

Nocticula and Malcanthet: "The only thing I'd adjust is to say that Nocticula is in fact the same as Malcanthet... or at the very least, they're very close allies or very bitter enemies."

"Malcanthet was created by Rob Kuntz in Dungeon #112's "Maure Castle," and I did the majority of the work developing her character in Savage Tide, the Demonomicon, FC1, and Rob developed her more in the Maure Castle sequels in Dungeon. All of that was under WotC, alas, so she's closed content. Since she's not based on a real-world myth, she's not public domain either (as is the case of Demogorgon, Orcus, Pazuzu, and many other demon lords).

Which is the primary reason we turned Nocticula into the queen of the succubi in Golarion, rather than continue using Malcanthet."

He elaborated a lot more in this ENWorld thread.

Nocticula and the Real World: "...meaning, there's not a lot of overlap, but there is some details on demon lords from that old MM2 table whose names come from real-world mythology... particularly Abraxas, Nocticula, and Socothbenoth, but also a few other mythological demons that never appeared on the MM2 list like Lamashtu and Haagenti.

Nocticula's really the only one that does pose a few difficulties between various editions of the game, but that IS because there are certain "gaps" that we had to fill in Pathfinder that we couldn't use from traditional D&D due to the fact that a few key demon lord niches (particularly those filled by Graz'zt and Malcanthet... despite the fact Malcanthet was pretty much completely developed in the pages of Dungeon Magazine and the Fiendish Codex by me, based on some original ideas from Rob Kuntz).

I went with Nocticula as being Paizo's succubus queen because I wanted to use a name from mythology, first and foremost. She has no real ties to canon D&D, so it's only Erik's work from the Green Ronin book that gets into conflict there. Frankly, I kinda think that Erik's version of Nocticula from Armies of the Abyss is kinda too friendly and nice to be a demon lord, so for Nocticula's incarnation into Golarion, I made her a lot meaner.

Nocticula and Shadow Demons: "We also couldn't use Rhyxali at all either, so when it came to figuring out who ruled the shadow demons in Pathfinder's setting, I gave that to Nocticula as well (she stole that from a previous demon lord, though)."

Succubus War: "Personally, I think that Nocticula and Malcanthet are different enough that they COULD exist side-by-side in the same setting. Heck, in canon D&D, we've already got Lynkhab, Malcanthet, Shami-Aumorae, and a couple other powerful succubus types vying for total control, so what's one more to the mix?"

I just want to point out that in 5e, it has been revealed that Shami-Amourae is done for. She's now just a vestige in the Amber Temple in Curse of Strahd. I think she was last seen in the Wells of Darkness in the Savage Tide adventure path. I don't know how he died.

Malcanthet Talks, Nocticula Walks: "In any case, while Nocticula is very much our "replacement Malcanthet," I did try to give her a different spin. Whereas Malcanthet's more about political manipulations and the like, Nocticula's more about solving those types of problems with assassinations. Nocticula's more of a combat focused succubus than Malcanthet, in other words. If the two of them teamed up to go adventuring, they'd probably compliment each other's strengths and weaknesses quite well."

Using Them All Together: "The fact that I wrote a lot of the 3rd edition demon content AND that I wrote all of the Pathfinder demon content also means there's similarities. You can see similar similarities in Dagon, Lamashtu, Mazmezz/Lolth, Kabriri/Yeenoghu, Socothbenoth/Graz'zt, and a few others.

Had Wizards of the Coast made all of the demons in the Abyss open content, I would have been more than happy for those demons to be the same ones in Golarion/Pathfinder. That's not the case, so I do the next best thing—I expand and develop along similar, parallel routes so that even though I can't talk about Malcanthet and Graz'zt and Lynkhab and all the rest in print, in anyone's home Pathfinder game (including mine, if I so choose), including closed-content material from D&D is a relatively simple task."

Note About Age: "...as a general rule... the more humanoid a demon lord looks, the younger he/she is."

The D&D Nocticula

4e Demonomicon - she's gone

They mentioned Nocticula in 3rd edition, but from what I can tell she is conspicuously absent in 4e and on. I think it would be really cool if both companies left spaces like this so DMs like me can merge them without any issues.

I can find almost nothing on the D&D Nocticula. I read that she's in Eldritch Wizardry from the white box days, but I don't own that. I read that she has some details in the Fiendish Codex, but all I could find was her name on a list.

She is Nocticula "The Undeniable," Demon Lord of Night. She rules Layer 72 of the Abyss: Darklight.

The Pathfinder Nocticula

She is Nocticula, "Our Lady in Shadow," Demon Lord of Assassins, Darkness and Lust. Her eyes have no pupils and "..her feet end in stony hooves that weep molten iron." Her wings are covered in runes and she has three tails ending in stingers.

She is an assassin, as in.. she kills other demon lords. Her victims include:

• Vyriavaxus, Demon Lord of Shadows
• Nahyndri: Gems, prisons and slavery
• Tharvool: Ashes, magical energy, whispers.
• Deluria: Frostbite, hunger, winter
• Vaetuu: Deathtraps, gears, possessed machinery

Nocticula is the first succubus and is actually a demigod in addition to being a demon lord. Her brother is Socothbenoth, demon lord of perversions, who she has a relationship with. She wants to take the next step to become a god. James Jacobs has said that there will be more material about that in the future.

Her Plan: Some think she is seeking redemption for her demonic nature. Others think it is a ruse so that a god will take her under their wing. Then she can literally stab that god in the back.

Shadowkiss: Nocticula has a magic crossbow that creates its own ammunition and can hit intangible creatures. The bolts are poison  - they can paralyze and even permanently blind targets.

Followers: Nocticula has cults spread out in a number of locations. Her worshipers include assassins, drow, shadow-using creatures, succubi, prostitutes and.. rapists. Welp. Her followers ingest psychedelic plants and engage in sex acts that involve a pint of blood. Egad.

Her Minions: Bats, carnivorous plants, seraptis demons (I'll talk about them below), shadow demons, and shadows.

Boons: Nocticula grants 3 different types of boons:

1. Charm person, darkness or suggestion a few times per day.
2. Cast blindness 3 times per day
3. Once per day you can dominate a monster.

She Lives Life to the Fullest: "Whispers persist that somewhere in demon lord Juiblex maintains a dwelling somewhere in the deepest parts of the city, as do even softer-spoken rumors that Nocticula sometimes visits the odious lord of slime for pleasures better left not imagined."

She is Powerful: In The Midnight Isles adventure, the demon lord Baphomet actually runs away when she shows up.

The Midnight Isles

Alushinyria

In Pathfinder, her abyssal realm is called the Midnight Isles. It does look suspiciously like it was lit by a blacklight.

The realm consists of dozens of islands on an immense sea of still black water. There is a disturbingly large moon in the sky and the days are 16 hours long - 8 hours of moonlight, 8 hours of darkness. Shadow spells are enhanced here.

The Islands: Each of the Midnight Isles represents an entity that she assassinated. The islands are actually made up of or linked to the remaining essence of each of those slain entities. Each of the islands is ruled by a unique succubus or incubus with special abilities.

The main island is Alinythia, Nocticula's personal realm of pleasure and decadence. On it are a number of settlements, including the massive city of Alushinyria.

Alushinyria: A city where demons and mortals live. Ruled by Shamira, a succubus and nascent demon lord. There is an arena called Battlebliss.

• Main Export: Slaves
• The House of Silken Shadows: The palace of Nocticula
• The sewers connect to the "Abyssal Undersump." I guess that's the sewer of the Abyss. What a funny idea. 

Shamira

Shamira: Shamira, ruler of Alushinyria, is a succubus with wings of fire and might have once been affiliated with Sarenrae, a goddess of good. In fact, she might be Saarnrae's daughter.

Other Islands: Wrath of the Righteous chapter 4 lists all three islands, but only gives details on a couple more:

• Vazglar: Mostly abandoned, forged from the remains of a demon lord of jealousy. There are spires of black rock and hordes of flying creatures.
• Colyphyr: A jungle where everything is poisonous. There are lots of vrocks in the sky having spasms and discharging lightning. Colyphyr was a demon lord who had been impaled by a runestone that had been floating in the astral plane.

Seraptis Demon

These depressing-but-cool monsters serve Nocticula and a few other demon lords. They are extremely powerful. In Pathfinder terms, they are CR 15.

Seraptis demons are 7 feet tall and they have four arms that have cuts on them that open like mouths, displaying rows of sharp teeth.

Suicide Demons?! In life, they were people who committed suicide and left behind a lot of ruin. An example given: "Suicide by detonating a necklace of fireballs in the middle of a wedding.."

They are bodyguards and champions. Some rule subdomains in Abyssal Realms. Any blood in their body is from other people. Here are their powers:

• Dominate
• Gaze of Despair: All within 30 feet make a save or are filled with overwhelming despair. I guess in 5e terms they are frightened (?) for d6 rounds. The despair can get so bad that the creature might attempt suicide.
• Ravenous Embrace: She grabs you and the mouths on he arms tear into the victim, draining their blood and strength. From that point on, as long as the victim is within 30 feet, their blood flows out of their body writhes through the air into the mouths. The blood heals her!

I love the idea of Nocticula running around, slitting the throats of demon lords. You can do tons of cool stuff with her and her islands.

Links

Nocticula in the Pathfinder wiki
Seraptis Demon Stats for Pathfinder
Midnight Isles wiki

Planescape - The Abyssal Undersump

October 17, 2016, 5:21 pm

≫ Next: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 26 - Curse of Strahd

≪ Previous: A Guide to Nocticula, Demon Lord of Assassins, Darkness and Lust

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We had a really good session of planescape last night. Once again, we played at Jessie's place.

I'm planning on doing a whole blood war thing in this campaign, using the Hellbound boxed set and other stuff. I ordered the last 3 books of the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path on amazon and when I got them, I ended up reading all three of them that same day.

Usually I have a hard time reading adventures, but these were really cool. I think the fact that many pages are taken up by stat blocks makes the book much easier to breeze through.

I ended up immediately pulling out Wrath of the Righteous stuff to use in last night's session. Here's my quick thoughts on each book:

• Book 4 - The Midnight Isles: This one is an adventure in the abyssal realm of Nocticula, the demon lord. It's awesome. So many great ideas. You can mine crystallized remains of slain demon lords, known as Nahyndrian crystals. These crystals are very dangerous but also very powerful.
• Book 5 - Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth: This is an adventure set in the maze of Baphomet, demon lord of minotaurs! How great is that? It's by Wolfgang Baur, who has written some of my favorite D&D stuff of all time.
• Book 6 - City of Locusts: I didn't like this one at all. This entire path culminates with a battle against Deskari, an insectoid demon lord. Deskari just doesn't do anything for me and the adventure feels like it isn't fleshed out enough. There's a section on the heroes defending a city against a demon invasion. It should be awesome, but it felt really flat.

The good thing about book 6 is that it is full of awesome NPCs, items, and all sorts of stuff. There's even a brothel devoted to Nocticula! I can plop that right in Sigil! And I am.

Tonight I started working that material into this campaign. I wanted to fit in Minagho, who is a daughter of Baphomet (!), but it didn't work out. I had too much stuff planned for this evening. The group really took the ball and ran with it.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Half-Dabus/Half-Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

The heroes own a cluster of buildings known as "Deadbook Square."

Alluvius Ruskin

Last Time: The heroes found out that a devil brothel was profiting off of the likeness of one of their employees. Bidam ended up getting a solidarity band glued on his arm. This band allowed the bad guy devil to do damage to him from afar.

Bidam realized that the solidarity band had been affixed to him with sovereign glue. When I cooked this up, I hadn't realized that it was so rare. It's legendary! I seem to remember it being less rare in other editions.

The heroes asked around and were directed to a shop called Tivvum's Antiquities. This place sells portal keys and magic items.

I wanted to direct the group here so that I could make sure that they got a look at the owner, Alluvius Ruskin. Alluvius plays a very big role in Faction War, and I want to weave this stuff in now so it feels like everything matters.

If I were to run Faction War and the group didn't know who Alluvius was, then she's just some random villain-of-the-week. Laying the groundwork now will make what she does later have more impact.

I did not expect the group to be so sharp! They were all over this. They noticed that Alluvius ("'Lu," for short) wasn't breathing and just took it from there. Here's her deal:

• Incantifier: She's an Incantifier, a magic-eater. She has "..no need to breathe, eat, or sleep; instead, she feeds on magic. Lu can absorb the effect of any spell thrown at her or drain every last drop of power from any magical item."
• Old Faction: The Incantifiers were a powerful faction of wizards who mysteriously disappeared. Alluvius is the only one left.
• Shadow Demon: Alluvius has this shadow demon named Ly'kritch that is searching for the mind of a specific wizard trapped in a gem. When she gets it in Faction War, it becomes a very big deal.
• Wizard Souls: So far, the shadow demon is bringing her gems with other wizards trapped in them. They can be used as portal keys. Alluvius loves to give them out, because she thinks that the wizard souls are destroyed when the portal is activated.
• Her Disguise: Alluvius plays up the fact that she is a little old lady, but the truth is that she is very powerful and extremely dangerous.
• Megalomaniac: Ultimately, she wants to take over Sigil. She thinks that controlling Sigil means that you control the multiverse.

Universal Solvent: The group finds out that universal solvent can eradicate the glue, but universal solvent is legendary. It costs 50,000 gold or more. The heroes are rich, but they are are not that rich.

Alluvius told them she knew someone who could help, but that he was in the planes conducting a study. She sold them portal keys to where he was. The keys were two gems with swirling energy in them.

The group was really, really suspicious of Alluvius and started grilling her. I didn't think I'd ever hear someone ask the question "Why aren't you breathing!?" in a hostile tone. Alluvius ordered them to get out. Her bone golem got up, anticipating a fight.

The adventurers went out into the street and cast identify on the gems and realized that there were wizard souls in them.

The players are very intent on investigating this. It really threw me because it is possible that they are going to get involved with Faction War stuff that I don't want to use until the end of the campaign. In the end though, even if they figure out her plan, I'm not sure if they can stop her. She doesn't even have the gem that she needs, yet.

The Abyssal Undersump

Tripicus

The heroes needed to find Tripicus, another NPC from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. Tripicus was in the Abyssal Undersump, a hilarious Pathfinder idea that I wanted to use ASAP. The Undersump is basically a demonic sewer system that runs under abyssal layers and connects them. Juiblex rules the Undersump. It is full of oozes.

Again, the group was really on the ball. They used a scroll of locate creature to find him. As they were wading through the abyssal muck, they spotted this yellow mold spore thing up ahead. The tunnel that they were in was round, so Bidam ran up the side of the wall to avoid the yellow mold spores. Theran cast misty step to bypass the spores.

A minute later, they saw that the gunk up ahead was black. George asked out loud, "Is it a black pudding?" I was shocked. No roll or anything. They started laughing. Yes, there indeed was a black pudding waiting in the muck to jump them as they walked on it.

Each of them ran up the side of the wall to avoid the pudding. The both rolled a DEX check to do so and rolled really high.

They met Tripicus, and he informed them of something I didn't know until I looked in the DMG - sovereign glue can be eradicated with an oil of etherealness.

He had some of that oil with him and sold it to them. In a few minutes, the glue was gone and the band came off. The group returned to Sigil.

Revenge on the Misfortune Devil

Symbol of Ardad Lili

I intended to just let the group have their way with the bad guys. These devils run a brothel where they try to get people to hand over their souls to their master, the "Whore Queen" Ardad Lili.

Last session, the heroes had promised to steal back the soul contract of a member of the Sign of One. The group enlisted the aid of the cranium rat swarm, Vermin Supreme. These rats have a singular hive mind and psychic powers.

The rats crept in to the brothel and gave the group the layout of the place. The contracts were in a chest that had the symbol of Ardad Lili on it.

The group went to the brothel. There was a troll bouncer at the door. Just like last week, Theran blew him up with a fireball. Then the heroes ran around back and busted through the back door.

The people inside:

• Infirion: The misfortune devil in charge of the operation.
• Succubus Employees: Cataclysmia, Bar Excellence ("Barrl Ek-say-lanssuh") and Vergania.

Bidam ran up to Infirion and punched him in the face. Theran started trying to bust into the back room where the chest was.

The misfortune devil is a 4e monster that can shift the damage it takes to other people. So I made this power a reaction in 5e terms - it can shift damage once per round. Bidam ran up, punched him, and then watched as Vergania dropped to the ground. The misfortune devil was unharmed.

Infirion ordered the ladies to subdue the heroes and he fearfully teleported outside.

Two of the ladies liked the heroes and didn't like what Infirion had just done. After a little bit of back and forth, all three ladies pretended that the heroes had beat them up and lied on the ground, "unconscious."

Theran got to the chest and once again, he was totally on the ball. He checked it for traps and detected one. He disarmed it with an arcana check. The group looted the contracts inside - there were four. The heroes fled the scene as Infirion watched them run off with the soul contracts, shaking his fist and telling them that they would rue this day.

I forgot to name the NPCs on the other soul contracts. We made up some terrible names on the spot:

• Pil Pilton
• Poland Rasper
• Jape Citrus

The Devils: The heroes want to hire the devil ladies. Infirion has failed in his duties and he's going to be punished. I had planned on having it be revealed that there were serious code violations in the brothel that would cause it to be shut down anyway.

It looks like the group is going to hire some of the devil ladies to work for them.

Bidam also obtained the other solidarity band. I am guessing that the players will either forget they have them or they will do something hilarious with them.

The adventurers rested. The next day, Theran had to go to Iggilv's demiplane to do his apprentice stuff. Bidam had the day to himself in Sigil.

The Trap

Areelu Vorlesh

Enter: Areelu Vorlesh. In Wrath of the Righteous she is a major villain linked to Deskari, the bug demon lord. Since I'm not using that, I changed her so that she is a daughter of Graz'zt.

My plan was for three of Graz'zt's agents to show up over the next three sessions to try and find the portal to Burningwater.

Backstory, Real Quick: Burningwater is the 9th layer of the Abyss, and up until now there was no way to get in. When the heroes rescued Bechard, the ancient obyrith/demon lord whale, he brought the group there. The adventurers moved in their buddy, my homebrewed demon lord Bazuuma (demon lord of pride and positive energy).

Demon lords are always trying annex other abyssal realms. Graz'zt has three layers and he wants this as a fourth. He learned about this entire situation from Iggwilv's incubus who turned on her and sold the info to Graz'zt.

The group actually has two portals to Burningwater:

1. In Bidam's bedroom. The key is his sword of sharpness
2. Theran's cubic gate can take you to Burningwater with the press of a button.

Areelu's plan: She pretended to be on a mission from Rhyxali, demon lord of shadows. Areelu said that her job was to find portals in Sigil to every shadow-related place:  like the Shadowfell, the plane of negative energy, and a goofy world I made up: Neverdusk, the World of Eternal Shade. That place probably should have been called "Neverdawn."

Bidam is a ladies man. Jessie got one look at the awesome art of Areelu and decided to help Areelu out. Bidam knew who go to to find the info. Along the journey, they bumped into Ash Vodiran, the greatest thief of Sigil. The players hate this guy so much. He wears a red jacket with no shirt on underneath so he can show off his rippling abs.

A while back, I tried to just hand him over to the group so they can beat him up but it just never happened. I still keep trying, but for whatever reason he's still here.

Ash tried to show off for Areelu. He said: "This guy's barmy. You're not safe with him. He holds a grudge for an eternity." Bidam had some choice words for the rogue.

Bidam spotted an item for sale in the market - a bronze sphere. Suddenly, Bidam heard the mental whispers of Tenebrous (undead/dead Orcus). Bidam had made a dark pact with him a few sessions back. He realized that the bronze sphere would be perfect for a phylactery. Tenebrous had offered Bidam the ability to become a lich (...or something. A swordmage/lich? A wight? A death knight? I don't know yet). Bidam bought the sphere.

Full Time at Iggwilv's

Codricuhn

Meanwhile, Theran was doing work for Iggwilv. She has three apprentices. I cooked up what they do all day:

• Landerbold the Dandy (arcanaloth): He keeps tabs on Iggwilv's spy, Anna Greystockings, who is in Graz'zt's realm. Landerbold also keeps his eye on the demon lord Socothbenoth, who Iggwilv is hoping to take control of one day.
• Selinza the Cat Lady: Her job is to question summoned demons. Iggwilv has control of 12 demon lords and it is a full time job keeping tabs on all of the schemes against them.
• Theran: Research another demon lord: Codircuhn.

Theran dug through and translated ancient texts. Codricuhn was a giant demon who climbed up the wall of an infinite rift. There are 6 other wanna-be demon lords that rule mini-realms inside of spheres that hover around him.

One of these wanna-bes is a marilith called The Lady of Sorrows. She collects Codricuhn's tears and yearns for "the perfect love."

Iggwilv decided to have Theran contact her. He used Iggwilv's crystal ball of telepathy, which lets him see her, communicate with her, and even cast suggestion on her once per day.

Theran tried to befriend The Lady of Sorrows but it didn't go well. He couldn't figure out an angle, so I had him roll a charisma check. It was very low. Iggwilv was not happy and she warned him that in the future, he would be punished for failing her.

Back in Sigil, Areele seduced Bidam in his room in Deadbook Square. Then she used her fiendish charm on him (I gave her 5e cambion stats). Bidam failed his save. He was charmed for one day.

Honestly, I didn't expect any of this to happen. I tried to drop clues that something was off with her. The group had been so sharp tonight that I figured that there was no chance that this would happen.

Areelu asked him about the portal to Burningwater. Bidam had no choice. He told her everything. She took his sword of sharpness - the key to the portal. She apologized to him, but did not reveal that she lied about working for Rhyxali.

The Quasit Key: Areelu gave him an item from Wrath of the Righteous: A Quasit Key. It's a jar that has a quasit floating in embalming fluid. This weird item allows you to teleport to a specific abyssal realm.

She told Bidam to use it to come visit her sometime. This was another trick. It would actually take you right to Graz'zt's throne room.

Theran came home. He had a bad day at work. Bidam told him what happened. The group grabbed Fall From Grace and went to confer with Bazuuma. The group decided to use the quasit key to go to "Rhyxali's Realm." Bazuuma figured that her positive energy would destroy the shadows, so there was nothing to fear.

So the group held hands and used the quasit key. They appeared before Graz'zt!

We stopped there. The next session should be epic.

The Stats of Graz'zt: Looking at Graz'zt's stats in Out of the Abyss, he has this madness aura. Each character will need to make a DC 23 WIS save.. so, yeah. I'm sure it doesn't apply to Bazuuma, a demon lord herself. The heroes are definitely surprised, so Graz'zt's mariliths will have a round to grab Bidam to stop him from planeshifting the group back out.

I actually looked over the stats to see if Graz'zt could fight them, not to the death, but in a skirmish of some sort. In my opinion, the heroes wouldn't stand a chance. He is really, really powerful.

Alliance: The thing about this scenario is that Graz'zt doesn't want to kill them - he wants to woo Bazuuma. He wants to annex her realm, so why not just get married? Graz'zt will sell it to her in a way to suggest that her positive energy might make him a better person.

Next session will probably come down to a choice:

• If Bidam will commit to marrying Bazuuma, then she'll reject Graz'zt's offer.
• If he doesn't, she'll go ahead and marry Graz'zt.

Mayor Theran: The group will be offered things to help spice up the deal. I'm thinking they'll each be offered a town to run in Azzagrat. Not sure yet, I need to go over my notes. I did tons and tons of preparation back when I ran the heroes through Azzagrat. 

Iggwilv is the X factor: Remember that Iggwilv has at last one spy in Graz'zt's realm. It won't be long before her apprentice Landerbold the Dandy finds out what is going on. Pretty early on, Theran is going to have Iggwilv in his head. She not only wants Burningwater for herself, she is also extremely jealous and won't want Graz'zt marrying Bazuuma. She knows the entire layout of Graz'zt's palace and can be extremely helpful.

I get the feeling that next week will be a classic session. Completely unexpected! We didn't even get to half the stuff I had planned for tonight, but that's D&D.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 26 - Curse of Strahd

October 18, 2016, 8:53 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 10/20/16

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Episode 26: The Greater Good

• You can watch this episode on Twitch here.
• I have a Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide here.
• You can buy Curse of Strahd here.
• Check out the Dice, Camera, Action section on reddit.

I usually wait about an hour after the show starts so I can watch the archived version and pause it as necessary. For some reason, this week I had a really hard time finding the archived version. I literally just sort of stumbled on it.

This week we have another special guest star: Liisa Lee, a voice actor. They do a really great job of picking people out for this show. Liisa was perfect and totally prepared.

The Party

(Liisa) Arabelle - Vistani
(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard 
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

Last Time: Paultin stayed at Van Richten's Tower with Dee. The rest of the group went to find a little girl named Arabelle. A guy in a rowboat was about to throw her into the lake...

The heroes are on the boat in the lake accosting the guy (his name is Bluto). Paultin comes riding on Valentina heading for Van Richten, who is on the shore. Paultin knows Van Richten killed his parents, but he doesn't know why. Paultin grabs him. Van Richten hits Paultin with his cane.. and rolls a 20. Paultin take a cool 11 points of damage.

Paultin rides off with Van Richten. I should note that we never find out what happened to Dee. Did he kill her? Did he knock her out and sneak past her? Did his shadow attack her?

Strix grabs the sack with the girl in it and gets back to the shore. Strix takes Arabelle out of the sack. Good god, Liisa does an awesome accent. Arabelle says she was playing the "hide and go seeking" and Bluto put her in a sack.

Strix uses thaumaturgy to shot at Paultin to stop. I swear I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever use thaumaturgy before. This loud noise attracts some mysterious person in the woods to come closer.

Bluto starts choking Diath and ends up in the lake, sinking. The group is pretty much fine with Bluto drowning.

Paultin casts suggestion on Van Richten, but he makes his save. Van Richten says he spared Paultin's life way back when. Paultin's family was responsible for the death of his son, Erasmus. Van Richten says that if the group defeats Strahd... "I will let you kill me." They shake on it.

The Mysterious Wizard: There's an elk off in the distance. Arabelle makes a check, rolls a natural 20! She knows that it's... the mad mage in a magical disguise! Wow... this should be awesome. Chris kind of dangled the mad mage in front of them a long time ago but the group didn't bite.

Van Richten vs. Paultin: Van Richten somehow lost the hag pin. A commentor reminded me that Diath took it last session.

Van Richten gives Paultin his journal so that he could read it and understand the full story of what happened with his parents. Didn't that journal burn up last time or am I confused?

You know.. Paultin could hand Van Richten over to Strahd. He is Strahd's spy and he would be rewarded greatly. Heck, he might be able to get Strahd to let the heroes out of Barovia in exchange for Van Richten.

Evelyn is suspicious and she decides to cast Zone of Truth on Paultin and Van Richten. Wow, smart! She is worried that Paultin is made of snow again (the group traveled with a simulacrum of Paultin for a while).

Van Richten explains that the group must use the hag pin on the little girl for the ritual to work. One prick of the hag's pin would kill her, just as it would Paultin. Good gawd. The group isn't too keen on killing Arabelle.

The more powerful the vistani, the more powerful the receptacle. Van Richten explains that the little girl has great power.

Evelyn accidentally walks into the zone of truth and blurts out that she love Paultin. The whole group goes "we know," even Van Richten.

Arabelle has had nightmares about Van Richten. She utters a curse to blind him. He makes his save. Van Richten almost stabs her, but backs off.

Waffles at Last: Arabelle says that her dad runs the vistani camp and he'll reward them with anything... including waffles! The group perks up. Will they finally get the waffles they've been questing so long for?

Diath points out that the group need chicken eggs for this ritual and that the vistani has the chickens.

Paultin tells the little girl she's being selfish for not wanting to be stabbed by the hag pin. She isn't happy about this and tries to pick his pocket. Evelyn is watching... Arabelle steals his spectacles - I think those are his eyes of charming. Evelyn calls her out and Paultin gets his item back.

We go through a pretty hilarious debate over whether to stab the kid with a pin. Evelyn insists that the group are heroes and they are not killing a kid. She says that they are not leaving Barovia until Strahd has been dealt with... even if the vistani could get them out.

The group heads toward the vistani camp. A dusk elf is in the woods and calls out to her. The dusk elf is part of her vistani camp.

Dusk elf

At the camp, Arabelle's dad, Luvash, is whipping a guy for losing her in the first place. Luvash is overjoyed to see his daughter alive. He rewards them with treasure. Chris does a great vistani accent, he makes Luvash a really fun character.

Vistani Treasure: Luvash has a big treasure hoard, divided up into boxes and containers. The group is allowed to take one container. The heroes convince him to give them two.

Strix assumes gaseous form and goes through each container. She goes into a rolled-up carpet but she can't make out what is in there. Chris described it as if there was a lump in it and indicated that there was something inside.

Luvash told them that one of the containers had a diamond in it (Diath needs one for his resurrection power) but Strix says there isn't one. Luvash gives a hearty laugh. He lied. He's so jolly about it that the group can't help but cut him some slack.

The group unrolls the carpet... that's where we stop.

If you want to know what all the treasure is, check out Curse of Strahd page 123. I think Evelyn will love the rug. Clearly, Chris has something up his sleeve here and is adding something new in.

Overall

There was a lot of funny stuff on this one and Liisa was really great. She was prepared, she knew everything she needed to know, and she did a fantastic voice for Arabelle. She fit right in and was really impressive.

Season 2: Chris mentions that a guy is making an animated opening for "season 2" of Dice, Camera, Action. He's putting Strix in it. I don't understand... what is season 2? Is it a new campaign? Or are they dividing up Curse of Strahd into two seasons?

Not enough happened on this episode for my liking. It was good, but it didn't really contain any major developments.

Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 10/20/16

October 20, 2016, 2:59 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Triple Realm of Azzagrat

≪ Previous: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 26 - Curse of Strahd

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I thought I'd try something new and review some D&D podcasts. I grabbed shows that had topics that interested me from the past few months and I've been listening to them while I do other stuff. If there is a podcast you think I should check out, let me know in the comments or email me and I'll try it.

Title: If you have a better name for this feature, let me know. I am sure that there's something good out there in the ether but I can't quite grasp it. Something about clairaudience? Here's a terrible one: "Podcast Mindblast." Maybe I should just use the most terrible name I can think of. 

I'm interested in D&D-focused podcasts for the most part, especially those that interview people who worked on products I like. I love to hear little factoids about that stuff.

Dragon Talk 9/8/16

You can listen to this here.

This is the official D&D podcast, hosted by Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito who are really fun to listen to. They get along great and they just seem like really happy people. On this episode, they concocted a phrase that I want to work into my D&D lexicon: Lore insertion.

On this show, they interview two people from Twits and Crits. I really like that show. They interviewed Elyse (aka Grimo Rudefellow) and Dan (the Dungeon Master).

Crossover: I had no idea that this exists in the same campaign world as Heroes and Halfwits. The plan is for them to cross over at some point. That is really awesome. One crew in LA and the other is in Texas, so they're not sure how they're going to work it out.

I didn't know this. In that campaign world, there is an eclipse once a month, creating a "dark day." That's just an awesome idea. I really like the stuff that the Heroes and Halfwits DM comes up with.

We learn that Elyse is a muppet enthusiast and that she is pretty new to D&D. She's big on board games.

New to the Game: I didn't realize that the DM Dan was so new to the game. I think he's doing very well so far. It was interesting to hear him and Elise asking Greg and Shelly questions about the game.

Problem Player: Dan seemed to be concerned about the meta-gaming of the dude who plays Decker Rootkit and was wondering what to do about it. From what I saw on the show, the guy playing Decker is going out of his way to be difficult for some reason. 

I don't think the issue is that he's meta-gaming. It seems like a symptom of a larger problem. I think it could be one of two things:

1. He's new and doesn't understand that he is behaving poorly.
2. He knows he's causing problems and he doesn't care.

I'm pretty sure it is the latter. I could be wrong, but that's the vibe I get.

Elise was actually trying to rein him in on a few episodes and it did work to a degree, but I get the feeling that they're better off without him at the table. They have too many players as it is, anyway.

Dead Games Society - Zeb Cook interview

You can listen to this here.

This show has really good audio quality and the host has a good voice. This is a nice, long interview and Zeb is extremely humble and self-deprecating. This guy made so much awesome stuff. He wrote AD&D second edition! He created Planescape!

TSR Job Application: Zeb says that when he first applied to work at TSR in the '70's, he was sent a "test" in the mail made by Gary Gygax that tested Zeb's knowledge on obscure medieval topics. There was a big section on polearms. I swear that's what he said.

Zeb's "resume" included an adventure - Dwellers of the Forbidden City. Boggles my mind.

They flew Zeb out for an interview but they didn't buy him a hotel room and he had to buy his own plane ticket. He slept on Gary's couch.

Up until that point, Zeb was an english teacher and it wasn't working out. His job at TSR actually paid less than the teaching job.

We learn a ton of things:

• Zeb feels that Against the Slave Lords was very formulaic and he cringes when he looks at it now.
• He thinks his ideas for Planescape sometimes weren't so playable. 
• Ascending AC in 2e: When making 2e, they actually wanted to have an ascending AC, but the company felt that would make all of the old product useless, and they still had a lot of books in their inventory.
• They Didn't Use Their Own Rules: Back when they played D&D in the office, they never used weapon speed or casting times (!) in 1e! The host is really taken aback by this.

Gary Guarded Greyhawk: The writers proposed a lot of stuff for Greyhawk, but Gary wouldn't allow them to set anything there unless he got to review it and he didn't have the time to do so. So a lot of products were purposely set in a vague, generic realm.

Bunch of Hacks: Zeb says that they were a bunch of hack adventure writers churning out stuff for a deadline. He said that the "manufacturing" process was actually very beneficial, as he learned how to cut corners to get stuff done on time.

D&D in Space: Zeb says that Spelljammer never really took off like they wanted. He thinks that players didn't view it as a campaign setting, but more as a method for travel. So people would have a few spelljamming adventures and then go back to a planet.

All I can say is that we played tons of spelljammer and loved it. Some of the best campaigns I ever played in were Spelljammer.

He talks about a lot of other things, including Star Frontiers and more about Planescape. This is a great interview and well worth listening to!

The Tome Show 9/23/16 - Interview with Craig Campbell

You can listen to this here.

I definitely wanted to listen to this because Craig wrote a fantastic 4e version of Baba Yaga's Hut which, in my opinion, made the 1e version playable. I could not believe how much content in the 1e adventure was left up to you, the DM, to create.

Craig is awesome. He's very fun to listen to. He definitely has the gift of gab and he has a real strong personality/charm about him.

He started off in D&D by writing a Living Greyhawk adventure that he now thinks is bad. He got this gig because he was friends with Jason Buhlman, who ended up working for Paizo. So basically every time Buhlman got a job somewhere, he'd farm out work to Craig.

Craig loves Deadlands and he has apparently run a lot of it. I always wanted to run that game, but I never quite got it all together. It seems like you could do some really cool stuff with it. Mixing the supernatural and cowboys sounds weird, but I think they pulled it off really well.

Baba Yaga: There was a list of D&D projects to choose from. Craig decided to go big and he took on Baba Yaga for 4e. The adventure is huge and he had to keep asking Chris Perkins if they could make it bigger. It took him two weeks to plan it out and a month to write it. Writing this thing was a major ordeal but Craig takes pride in getting stuff done on time.

Murders & Acquisitions: Craig has spent the last three years making his new game - Murders and Acquisitions. The game is about killing your way up the corporate ladder. He says that the character sheet looks like a resume. That is hilarious.

He kickstarted that game and now he's working on another game about superheroes in the prohibition era.

Another great interview! Craig does a podcast called nerdburger and I think I definitely need to check that out.

Know Direction #140 - 10/19/16

You can listen to this here.

This podcast is all about Pathfinder. This episode has an interview with Erik Mona, who is one of the main guys at Paizo. I was hoping to hear about Golarion and lore about the NPCs, tidbits about the adventures that kind of thing. Erik was a huge Greyhawk guy in the Paizo Dungeon Magazine era and I was hoping to hear about that, too. But this podcast was focused more on product release schedules rather than lore.

Pathfinder 100: Erik talks about how when they did Pathfinder 100, he was shocked at the lack of a reaction. Apparently this issue has a ton of stuff and major reveals.

Issue 100 was a big deal to him because in the early days, things were so uncertain that he remembers asking the Paizo CEO to guarantee that they'd print up to issue 6  just so that the first path would be complete.

There was all sorts of special stuff in issue 100 and he says it felt like it went unnoticed. That's when he decided they needed to shake things up, and that led to their sci fi game Starfinder.

Iconic NPCs: Bestiary 6 (yes, they are making their 6th monster manual) is going have all of the archdevils in it. This book actually sounds awesome. It is going to detail a lot of major entities. This sounds like something I will buy.

Technology: Erik says that all of their Pathfinder products that integrate sci fi technology sell really well. That actually shocks me. I didn't realize people liked that kind of mixing so much.

Erik talks a lot about Starfinder. The heroes will have a spaceship and go on adventures. There will be outer planes as well.

Red Sonja: Then he talks a ton about Pathfinder Worldscape, a comic where the pathfinder iconics cross over with Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars and other pulp heroes. He is super excited about this thing.

On this show, the hosts just wind Erik up and let him go. He's fun to listen to, but I just didn't have a lot of interest in these topics.

Down With D&D 69 - What's New, UA Encounter Building, and Personal Tips Grab Bag

You can listen to this here.

This podcast is by two guys who write Adventurers League adventures. One of them is Shawn Merwin. He writes the first adventure of every season, which from what I can tell is the most important one.

Shawn sounds really run down. The poor guy is overworked or something. He mentions a problem player in his Curse of Strahd game, and I wish he would have said more about it. I am always interested in that stuff. The whole problem player thing needs to be nipped in the bud if we want the game to get bigger and stay that way.

Encounter Building: They start off talking about the problems with the encounter building rules and writing adventurers league stuff. They are saying that it is hard to scale encounters because the power levels between classes is too swingy.

They think that a good idea would be to have a section in each adventure that tells the DM how to modify each encounter based on the style of play.

Tips: They offer some tips to DMs. They talk about the dangers of handing out powerful magic items. One of them solves this by modifying them so that they have a drawback. For example, he gave out a sword that shoots a powerful beam that does tons of damage, but then it needs to be left in the sun for a year to recharge.

In my opinion, if you have a player who is trying to take advantage of things - that's the problem. Not the item. To me what that means is that you want a different style of game than your players and that you should work something out or separate.

This show is really short. Too short! It's a half hour and it flew by. It felt like they barely got any thoughts out and then it was over.

There you go! Let me know if there's any shows that you think I should check out.

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Triple Realm of Azzagrat

October 21, 2016, 3:29 pm

≫ Next: Planescape - The Whispering Library

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 10/20/16

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In this guide, I am going to present an overview of the realms ruled by the demon lord Graz'zt, one of the major villains in the D&D multiverse. I'm going to give you my version of it, which combines material from all of the editions of D&D. This should give you a nice starting point to make your own version of Azzagrat for your campaign.

This material is drawn from:

• For Duty & Deity
• Fiendish Codex I
• Expedition to the Demonweb Pits 
• Dungeon Magazine 151
• Demonomicon
• Dungeon Magazine 212
• Out of the Abyss (Graz'zt's 5e stats)

If you only use one source, the Demonomicon actually has a really nice rundown of everything in the triple realm.

The Essential Information

 

• Graz'zt rules the 45th, 46th, 47th layers of the Abyss.
• The city of Zelatar actually exists on all three layers at the same time. Each of the three "districts" of Zelatar is different and has its own name: Fogtown, Gallenghast and Darkflame.
• The layers of Azzagrat are connected by a river of salt.

The Layers of Azzagrat:

• (45th) Rauwend: Home to Allagash, Zelatar (Fogtown), the River of Salt, and the Zrintor Forest. This place affects memory.
• (46th) Barogund: Home to Tornbend, the salt swamp, and Zelatar (Gallenghast). On this layer, the ground projects light and shadows into the sky.
• (47th) Voorz'zt: Home to Zelatar (Darkflame), the Bay of Choking Bile and Samora. This layer has a blue sun. Heat does cold damage and cold does fire damage. The blue sun makes it easy for people to disguise themselves.

Graz'zt: He is 9 feet tall and is "the perfect figure of untamed desire." To him, restriction is the only sin. He wields a greatsword called Angdrelve, the Wave of Sorrow.

Main Types of Creatures That Live in Azzagrat: Many of the demons and creatures who live here are handsome or beautiful:

• Manes and dretches
• Lamias
• Mariliths
• Vrocks 
• Tieflings 
• Succubi  
• The Abat-Dolor: A race that looks like Graz'zt. Graz'zt's former wife, Elazalag, is an Abat-Dolor.

There are also a number of other creature types: Armanites, shadow demons, harpies, abyssal giants, lillitu, and alu-fiends.

Gates: All throughout Azzagrat are these "ovens" of green flame. Some of them are portals to other areas in the triple realm. Many of them are just flame geysers:

• They appear at random. 1 in 3 is actually a portal.
• They are 4-6 feet high. Peering through does not show the destination.
• The green flame does normal fire damage: 2d6 fire.

Layer 45 - Rauwend

Viper Tree

Rauwend is best known for the vast Zrintor forest. The trees are creatures known as viper trees.

River of Salt: This river passes through all three layers and is quite deadly.

• Getting within 10 feet of it might make you suffocate on dust from the grinding salt crystals.
• If you fall in, you must stay "afloat" or else you will be reduced to red paste in d6+2 rounds.
• Just reaching in to aid an ally does 2d12 damage to you.

Zrintor Forest: As you travel through this forest full of viper trees, you can spot plumes of dark grey smoke against the grey sky (Zelatar) and hear the tooting of a salt barge from the river of salt.

Viper trees catch fire easily. If a blaze breaks out, the trees hiss "Murderers! Flame Bringers!" Sometimes, Graz'zt enjoys watching them burn and suffer.

Allagash: This town was once part of a demon breeding program. An army of Orcus came and wiped the place out, and the weird demons here were reanimated. The invaders were repelled but nobody is sure what demons still lurk here.

Zelatar (Fogtown)
 

It rains a lot here. There are many merchants selling all sorts of things. The majority of the merchants are bariaur, gnomes, and arcane. Dretches and manes live in hovels here among slave gulags and rickety insane asylums.

The Roosting Wall: The city is surrounded by scythe-topped walls. 2,000 vrocks perch on the wall overlooking river of salt. This wall is smeared from decades of droppings. Just outside, farmers harvest colorless edible fungi.

Easy to Get Lost: There's a magical mental fog effect that makes details difficult to remember.

Lots of Parks: These are small, tree-lined walkways that meander among statuary stolen from many other planes. Some have displays of petrified plants - roses, daisies, daffodils, sunflowers and other stone flowers. Others have dangerous hanging plants, some with luscious red berries ("bloodthorn" that sucks your blood).

Gates: There are doors and arches that serve as gates to different layers. Many of them have long tongues that unfurl for you to walk on.

Viper Gate: This is a specific gate with two white, leafless tress on either side of it. The branches are topped with snake heads.

The Lich: There is an estate guarded by a lich loyal to Grazzt. The lich sits on a throne on a wall and strikes down any who enter. The lich holds one perfect white rose.

(Tavern) The Wandering Balor: This tavern has four elephant legs and it wanders Zelatar. To enter: Climb numerous snakeskin ropes dangling down.

(Tavern) The Whimpering Mortal: This dangerous place caters to drunk demons.

(Inn) Planewalker's Guild: This place also serves as a safehouse for the Planewalkers Guild, an organization of planar travelers. They use the Infinite Staircase, a planar connecting realm that connects to Azzagrat.

(Inn) Devil's Doom: An inn for out of town demons.

The Bonebreaker's Pit: This section of Fogtown is full of  punishment and butchery. Manes here are either food or they are turned into rutterkins to serve in the blood war. Manes will run up to heroes begging and pleading for mercy.

The Boulevard of Fortunetellers: This section is filled with tieflings, succubi and lamia fortune tellers/palm readers/hucksters. There is a pillar here made of 200 gypsy heads known as Grandmother Fortuna. It speaks only to Graz'zt and his favored consorts. Lamia spies keep an eye on it.

The Queen's Causeway: An undermarket that primarily sells gray chalky fungus in many flavors. There are wide stairs at the south end of the market lead to Gallenghast. This place is the hideout of Raxivort, formerly Graz'zt's slavemaster. He stole from Graz'zt and is in hiding.

Barogund, the 46th Layer

In this realm, sunlight shines up from the ground. The shadows are towers of darkness. The sky is dark during the day and grey at night. Visitors will go temporarily blind after 24 hours and they will be permanently blind within a few days.

Tornbend: This was once a trading outpost between demons and djinn who lived on an earthmote called Skyshrine. The earthmote has a chain that extends to the ground. The djinn vanished and Tornbend was abandoned. Skyshrine still hovers above it. Nobody knows what lurks up there, if anything.

Bloodseep demons now live in Tornbend. Bloodseep demons have translucent, cracked bodies that weep poison blood.

Salt Swamp: Home to Zhelamiss, night hag envoy of Cegilune. She runs a shabby wooden village. Spies in her coven of witches report to Graz'zt.

Zelatar (Gallenghast)

Gallenghast has a lot of villas of demonic nobles, markets, inns and lodging houses.

Outside of Gallenghast is a grass clearing. Monthly tournaments are held here which are known for their savagery and their extreme formality. Winning a death match can make you an instant celebrity.

(Inn) Sign of the Black Heart: This nn caters to the wealthy and powerful. Finding it is very difficult. It is built around a square central courtyard.

• 50 gp/night
• Security: Shadow demons and two vrocks. Rooms have alarm spells. 
• Succubi frequently "visit" patrons.
• Each room has an invisible quasit that spies for Graz'zt.
• Menu: Fresh mane meat, larvae, blood pudding. Mortals are a delicacy.
• Stables: 5 nightmares, 3 babau grooms. The nightmares are unhappy and don't want to be here.

The Wordsmith's Pit: Crowds gather around this pit and bet on gladiatorial combats that are often between a vrock and a captured devil. The master of the arena is Madjack Madarang.

The Running Market: Succubi and carnivorous demons buy mortals, larvae, and blood war prisoners here. Manes are cooked up and sold. Enslaved mortals, devils and yugoloths sold in pairs.

• The demons like to let slaves escape and watch them get chased down.
• Sentient creatures are sold as food.
• Vrocks come here at night for scraps.
• Demons often sample a slave - fingers, toes, an ear.

Chosen's Tabernacle: This is a profane cathedral of Graz'zt's cult. The high priestess, Lavendeth, is a favored consort of Graz'zt.

Voorz'zt, the 47th Layer

In this realm, a blue sun hangs in the sky. Fire does cold damage, and cold does fire damage.

The Bay of Choking Bile: The river of salt cascades off of cliffs into this alkaline body that mixes with the Blood Sea of the Abyss. Decomposing demon fish float and rot here. On the shores, Graz'zt keeps planar vessels and multiple Chaos Ships that can navigate the Abyss. His flagship is known as Waukeen's Tears.

Samora 

Samora is a lawless den of vice and depraved dreams. Open sewers run down the center of the city's streets. The city is full of perfumed spires and pleasure pits.

Ruler: Maretta, Lady of the Counting House.

The Lady's Lancers: These are 13 alu-fiend guards who patrol Samora. They fly, wield lances and they usually work alone.

The Counting-House: A dungeon beneath the city.

(Boarding House) The Golden Opportunity: In the back room lurks Rule of Three, a wily old githzerai sage who reports to Graz'zt on his efforts to unite the fiends.

(Inn) Maretta's Beds: Owned by Maretta, luxurious and reasonably priced. The owner may pay nocturnal visits to attractive customers.

(Inn) The Sleeping Berk: There is an oven of green flame outside the inn. The gate takes you to the outskirts of Zelatar.

(Tavern) The Weeping Goddess: Lots of fiends, frequent bar brawls.

(Tavern) The Lord's Pawns: The clientele are servants of Lady Marretta's estates. Telepathic conversations can be "overheard" if you dare to get close enough.

(Tavern) The Sodden Solar: You can meet a guide here named Warwick Osseyes. He's a tiefling with black eyes and sharp nails. 

Drug Parlor: These places frequently sell a drug called lubix. You sprinkle the powder into a wound and bandage it. You will feel one minute of intense pain and then you will feel no pain for an extended period of time.

Slave Plaza: They sell humans, demihumans, humanoids, monsters, planar creatures. Elves and halflings are very popular.

Breweries: There are 3 of them. They make Malefic Mead, Baatezu Blood Wine and Deva's Bile. These are deadly to mortals. You can also buy Terran Brandy for 500 gp. It is alcohol distilled from the essence of dying fey.

Barracks: These places house blood war soldiers but are frequently unoccupied.

Stockyards: They keep herd animals from across the planes for eating. My list of creatures includes rothe, giant space hamsters, and unicorns. Wealthy demons consider unicorn horns to be a status symbol. They use them to pick their teeth after a meal.

Zelatar (Darkflame) 

This district is full of mazelike alleys and it a haven for those who do not wish to be found. This is a home to Graz'zt's deadliest assassins, who are shadow demons, succubi and alkiliths.

Zul's Hanging Garden: Hundreds of traitors hang above writhing carnivorous plants. Their piteous moans are like music to the plants who dine on their blood and bile.

The Great Green Oven: This oven/portal is the size of a small mansion. Supposedly it can move travelers to any point in the city. Nobody's sure if it teleports you or kills you. It doesn't seem to affect powerful demons.

The Argent Palace

This palace of white stone is where Graz'zt lives. It is in Zelatar and thus exists on all three layers of Azzagrat simultaneously. It is situated on a plateau 50 feet above the town. As you approach, you can hear screams as Graz'zt slowly tortures and kills sacrifices given to him by mortal supplicants.

Guards: It is guarded by 121 lamias, 66 succubi, 23 vrocks, and 23 priestesses of Graz'zt.

Approaching the Palace: This is known as Viper Tree Boulevard. There are 66 viper trees lining the path. Every third viper tree is a portal to elsewhere in the city. Demons and tieflings can see these portals clearly with no check required.

The Gate of Hands: A gate that is bone white and marked with thousands of fingers and hands.

Front Door: Huge gates of polished stone stand at the head of an avenue lined with statues of Grazzt. The legendary towers of the Argent Palace rise above them, piercing the gloom of the sky with harsh light. Demon guards stalk the broad courtyard in front of the gates.

Layout:

• It has 66 ivory towers.
• It contains 100 cold, mirrored halls that are full of wandering bodaks.
• There are portals to the Plain of Infinite Portals, Pandemonium, and Gehenna.

The Mirrored Halls: These halls are extremely cold and it is easy to get utterly lost in them. Bodaks wander these halls. I use the 5e bodak stats from right here, they worked great for me.

Don't Die: If you die here, you will turn into a bodak and you will wander his palace for all eternity

Each tower is different. There are exterior walkways high up that connect them. Many of those walkways are guarded by vrocks and balors. Here are some of them:

The Hundredfold Hall of Silver: This tower is lined with mirrors and guarded by a legion of simpering mirror mephits.

The Lady's Study: This is where Iggwilv the Witch-Queen stays when she visits.

The Spiral of Storms: Graz'zt collects storms and keeps them in magic rooms. He uses them as tests for guard recruits.

The Tower of Doors: This tower has numerous portals to different places:

• A dragon's lair in Pandemonium.
• An iron fortress on the Plain of 1,000 Portals ruled by Zryznian, an ultraloth slaver ally of Grazzt.

The Velvet Realm: This tower is swathed in black and scarlet, inhabited by Grazzt's personal pleasure slaves. Succubi, incubi, lamias, all sorts of creatures from all over the multiverse.

Weal of the Blooded: A cabal of 6 vampires loyal to Grazzt. This place resembles a blood-soaked eladrin temple.

Beneath the palace are tunnels that are somewhat forgotten.

Chasme Tunnels: A disused access point all but forgotten by all but the lowliest demons. One links to a guest room in the palace:

Guest Room: It has crystal chandeliers, golden candelabras, and walls with works of art: Graz'zt as lord of the abyss, a triple realm vista, portrait of his sister Rhyxali and his son Iuz, god of evil.

• Magic Pool: This horseshoe-shaped pool heals you for a moment, then begins draining your hit points. Non-evil creatures must make a saving throw to exit the pool.

The Whispering Library: I'm not sure if this is in one of the towers or what. This place is lit by ghostly floating candles and it is full of tomes that literally groan with secrets. There are four agents of Vecna that return books to the shelves.

Important tomes stand open on stone pedestals in an enclosed central hall, but its entrance is guarded by four frog-like hezrous and a horrid molydeus.

If you whisper a secret into the stacks, you get a secret in return. You can end up trapped in this library if you do this.

The Throne Room: Graz'zt's throne room is loaded with items and NPCs:

• Dancers: Dozens of lithe humanoid slaves caper and dance.
• The Amber Choir: Succubi entombed in amber are in agony, singing alluring songs.
• Dimensional Globe: This crystal sphere prevents the use of teleportation. 
• Elemental Pools: These pools are normal water. Graz'zt can infuse them with elemental power causing them to do acid/cold/fire/poison damage.
• The Ruby Stairs: When Graz'zt stands on these stairs, he crits on a 19-20.
• Statue: A statue of Graz’zt with offerings at its feet. 
• The Altar of Obedience: Graz'zt's allies do extra damage when they are near this.
• Throne: An ornate throne studded with gems that allows Graz'zt to be undetectable by any means.
• Guards: Two marilith guards, Unhath and Reluhantis.
• Verin: A demon lord in his own right, he is a vain, pure white humanoid with no hair. He is Graz'zt's chief diplomat.

Links

Forgotten Realms Wikia: Zelatar
Details on Verin, "The Voice of Graz'zt"

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Planescape - The Whispering Library

October 24, 2016, 1:31 pm

≫ Next: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 27 - Curse of Strahd

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Triple Realm of Azzagrat

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Tonight's session of Planescape was all about returning to Graz'zt's realm and making a decision. Graz'zt wants to marry the group's demon lord friend and annex her abyssal realm.

The players had to choose:

1. Graz'zt marries Bazuuma
2. Bidam (Jessie's character) marries Bazuuma

I had planned for either one. I knew there was a good chance that the heroes would go for the Graz'zt thing because they usually go for nutty stuff like that.

I have been working on a guide to the plane of positive energy and it is really mind-blowing. There isn't a lot of material on it, but what is there is really cool. In a 4e Blackmoor campaign I ran, Bazuuma was infused with positive energy which made her a sort of "good" demon lord. Now that I've read more about positive energy, I can give her some cool powers.

I made stat blocks for her and her demons. They aren't completely done yet. I'm going to post what I have so far at the bottom of this post.

• Jovocs: This is a conversion of a 3e monster. These demons serve Bazuuma
• Contempticorns: Foul-mouthed red unicorns lifted from the Slaughtergrid adventure.
• Bazuuma: I am still working on her eye rays. Right now she has the ten traditional eye rays and then ten others based on 5e spells which need a lot of tweaking.

Most of the material in this session was taken from a 4e dungeon magazine adventure called Court of the Dark Prince.

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Half-Dabus/Half-Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

A marilith

The adventurers had been tricked into using a quasit key to teleport to Graz'zt's court with Bazuuma. Graz'zt immediately hit them with a command spell and said.. "Halt." That meant that on their next turn, they could do nothing. The save DC for this was 23, so all of the heroes failed. Bazuuma was immune.

Graz'zt is way, way too powerful for the heroes to fight. I had considered doing some kind of skirmish between him and the group but that just doesn't seem feasible for these 11th level characters.

Nine mariliths advanced on the heroes and Bazuuma fired off 5 eye rays at them (she has 20 eyes). Then she used her concentrated beam of positive energy, which overheals you until you explode!

Grazzt was impressed. He has this sidekick, another demon lord ho is named Verin. Verin did the talking. He explained:

• Graz'zt meant them no harm.
• He wanted to marry Bazuuma and annex her realm.
• Together they would rule the "Quadruple Realm of Azzagrat."
• The heroes would be given settlements in Azzagrat to rule.
• He asked the group to stay for dinner to consider the offer.

They decided to stay and hear them out. They were brought to a guest room where they would wait for two hours while dinner was prepared.

A vrock

Scrying: Theran's robe of eyes can see invisible, so he noticed a scrying sensor in the room. Graz'zt's high priestess, Lavendeth, was spying on them. The group communicated via Bazuuma's telepathy.

Bidam was torn. He didn't want to get married, but he was appalled at the idea of Bazuma marrying Graz'zt. She basically told Bidam that if he wasn't going to marry her, she was going to marry Graz'zt and then try to overthrow him to take the Triple Realm for herself!

The group took a quick jaunt to The Velvet Realm, a tower where Graz'zt's wives and concubines lived. Graz'zt's first wife, Ela Zalag the Abat Dolor told Bazuuma what she was in for. This basically was an excuse for me to run a bitter divorcee smoking and complaining about her ex. While we're doing simpson clips, here's my favorite part of that episode.

Iggwilv: The heroes went back to the guest room, and Iggwilv's scrying sensor appeared. She wanted Theran to go to Graz'zt's library of whispers. There, if you utter a secret, you can learn a secret in return. The problem is that each time you do this, you must make a saving throw or be trapped in the library.

She wanted Theran to go there and find out the truename of the demon lord Codricuhn, and the other semi-demon lords who accompanied him.

The group went to the library, and shared some secrets about Orcus, and the modrons  In return, they learned the truenames of Codricuhn and two of his sidekicks. The heroes had laid the groundwork for Iggwilv to take control of a truly gigantic demon lord.

Malcanthet, Demon Queen of Succubi

The Angel of Love: Fall from Grace wanted to learn something, too. She revealed that when she ended up in Malcanthet's realm, she was tossed into solitary confinement. Fall From Grace is Malcanthet's granddaughter, and she isn't too thrilled with the fact that Fall From Grace is a paladin.

Fall From Grace says she was visited by an Angel of Love - a good creature that is what the succubi were before they turned to corruption. The Angel told Fall From Grace that if she kept on the path of good, she could one day become an Angel of Love and at last be free of her succubi form.

The group couldn't hear what secret she learned about the angel of love... low perception checks.

Vrock Battle: With that done, they were attacked. Basically, an incubus named Ghavish was afraid that Iggwilv had sent the group to kill him. He had betrayed her not too long ago. Ghavish decided to try to kill the heroes first.

The group fought Ghavish and two vrocks and it was quite a battle. The vrocks stunning screech is no joke. Bidam now gets 3 attacks a round with his sword of sharpness and it's pretty epic. Theran has yet to use his staff of power once and it is starting to bug me. The heroes prevailed and Ghavish is no more.

The Decision: So we got to the dinner and Bazuuma and Bidam were still telepathically trying to decide what to do. Their decision: Bazuuma was going to secretly marry Bidam. Then she'd marry Graz'zt and they'd try to take him down from the inside.

Crazy idea! I have no idea how this is going to play out. But what happened was that the group got really excited when they heard Verin's offer.

Theran's Domain: Theran was offered rulership of an earthmote in Azzagrat called Skyshrine, a place where djinns had mysteriously disappeared.

Bidam's Domain: Bidam was offered rulership of Allagash, a former demon breeding ground that was attacked by the army of Orcus and now was home to weird demons. Bidam has a dark pact with Orcus/Tenebrous, and Bidam sensed that the demons there were linked to Orcus and would do his bidding. Tenebrous wanted Bidam to muster them and attack Lamashtu, who (in my campaign) had taken over Orcus's plane of Thanatos.

As soon as Jessie heard that, she got really excited and the deal was made.

The bad guys had two meals prepared, one for a "yes" and one for a "no."

1. Yes: Giant space hamster steak.
2. No: A baby pegasus on a spit roast.

Delicious space hamster it was!

Next session, the group will clean up their new dominions in Azzagrat and perhaps we'll do the secret wedding.

I have absolutely no idea how this will play out. I guess it will go like this:

1. Secret wedding.
2. Wedding with Graz'zt? Maybe Bazuuma will try to put it off.
3. Magical connection of Burningwater to Graz'zt's Bay of Choking Bile (wish spell?).
4. Graz'zt expanding his city, Zelatar. Zelatar currently exists in 3 planes at once. Now it will extend to Burningwater, too.
5. How the hell could Bazuuma overthrow Graz'zt? Would Iggwilv stand for it? I doubt it. I assume Tenebrous can help, as can Codricuhn if Iggwilv can force him to kneel before her. Bechard, the obyrith, is loyal to the heroes because they freed him way back when, so he's the one who will likely keep them alive.

I hope I can fold this into my upcoming plans of running the Hellbound boxed set. We'll have to see how everything plays out. I'm a little worried that the group is in way over their heads on this one. Graz'zt is insanely powerful.

A great session! We are on a nice little roll. We don't do a lot of combat and I'm making an effort to try to make sure each session has some sort of "set piece" encounter.

Here's what a Jovoc looks like:

I made these stat blocks with the 5e monster maker, which is completely free and quite awesome. Here's the stats:

Here's the foul-mouthed unicorn stats:

Here's the rough draft/unfinished Bazuuma, demon lord of pride and positive energy:

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 27 - Curse of Strahd

October 25, 2016, 9:17 pm

≫ Next: Dragon Plus Issue 10

≪ Previous: Planescape - The Whispering Library

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Episode 27: Thing in the Rug

• You can watch this episode on Twitch here.
• I have a Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide here.
• You can buy Curse of Strahd here.
• Check out the Dice, Camera, Action section on reddit.

This one is really fun! Liisa is back but she doesn't have too much to do. I sort of feel bad for the guest stars. The Godsfall guy in particular didn't really get to do much. I guess that's just how the guest star thing goes.

The Party

(Liisa) Arabelle - Vistani
(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard 
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

Last Time: The heroes are thinking about using a ritual to defeat Strahd, but it means killing a little girl named Arabelle. Diath stole the hag pin that can kill her. Van Richten does not know that.

The group is being rewarded with treasure from the vistani. Strix picked a rug. Something is in it and she is about to unfurl it.

Arabelle uses her tarokka deck and does a reading. The cards tell her that the hag pin is close.

The rug has a unicorn on it. Chris points out that this is not Strix's style at all, and that it would look terrible in her hovel.

In the rug is... a little jester guy. I see why Chris is wearing the jester hat now. He has a little club. Strix snatches it from him. He is a silent, evil little golem. The group doesn't find out his name, so I won't say it. Check out Curse of Strahd pages 235-236.

His eyes open. Evelyn senses evil coming from him. She commands him to no longer be evil. It doesn't seem to work.

Arabelle thinks he looks cool and wants to be friends with him. She asks him to find the hag pin. Yikes. Diath has it.

Luvash declares that the evil toy is now the property of the heroes in a most gregarious manner. Jared wonders if they will one day turn him into a real boy.

Paultin goes to scope out Van Richten and somehow gets lost in the tiny camp by rolling a natural one. It is a maze of horses. He eventually finds Van Richten, who seems to be crying. Paultin has no sympathy whatsoever.

The adventurers grab some more treasure. They get non-magic jewelry and a potion. Check out the contents of that onyx box with gold filigree on page 123. Luvash says that the potion is a potion of mind reading. My two favorite Chris Perkins voices: Luvash and Barmy the lich. They both crack me up.

Wow.. they're going to get their waffles! They are being made, as we speak, in a vistani tent. Most of the group goes into the tent.

Strix stays outside the tent. She's sure something bad is going to happen. She spots two vistani talking quietly outside. Strix goes into gaseous form and learns that one vistani is leaving to inform Strahd that the adventurers are here. Holly is really on the ball with her spells and character stuff. She puts a lot of thought into everything and it really does make the show better.

Diath rolls a natural 20 on his perception. He sees that the shadows of the vistani and Paultin are moving of their own accord. He joins Evelyn dancing and warns her that something's up, and they hilariously dance out of the tent.

Chris points out that the waffles are still being made. What a waffle tease. To dangle it out there like that is so cruel. They were a good 20 feet from those waffles.

Van Richten tells the group that Strahd is linked to the vistani and that their shadows are representative of that. Diath grabs Paultin and asks him what he did. Paultin goes, "Is this the part where we kiss?"

Arabelle shows a kid named Joseph her new buddy. The group is calling the little serial killer golem "Murderbot." The kid spits on Murderbot. Murderbot opens his mouth and fires a dart into Joseph's neck. He falls over. He's dead!

Van Richten says he can bring the kid back to life, but he won't do it unless the group agrees to stick the hag pin in Arabelle (killing her).

Evelyn grabs Van Richten and says, "You heal this child, you dirty cockroach." She intimidates him and throws him to the ground. Wow.

We end up rolling initiative. Arabelle runs and Diath tries to grab her, but he rolls a 3. Paultin casts sleep on Arabelle, which works. Diath pulls out the hag pin and stabs Arabelle!! She reaches up and smears her blood on his face. Then she shrivels into a husk, dead. Ohhh wow.

Strix has see invisible going and rolls a 20 on her perception check. She spots an individual watching from the shadows. The mad mage?! No. Strix decides to cast enlarge/reduce on this person. He makes his save.

The mystery person steps out of the shadows and stabs Van Richten. It's Arugal the vistani.

Paultin casts thunderwave, hitting Arugal and a couple of party members. Strix's moths and dirt clumps go flying everywhere.

The vistani in the tent have heard the activity. Strix freaks out and uses a fireball to set the tent on fire. She apparently has named her horse Mr. Runawayface.

An angry mob rushes Diath, who is holding dead Arabelle. He chucks her corpse at them and turns to run.. and there's her dad, Luvash. Diath avoids eye contact.

Luvash starts choking him with his whip. Diath slips out and jumps on Strix's horse. Paultin turns invisible and heads for a horse. Evelyn flies into the air with her magic boots, crying. She wants to get the dead kid, Joseph, and take him along. She could roll him up in the unicorn carpet and make a delicious corpse burrito. No.. she decides to let him go to The Morninglord.

Van Richten rolls a critical on Arugal. Strix can see Paultin because she can see invisible.

Arugal kills the horse that Van Richten and Paultin are on.

Strix and Diath are actually torn on whether to go get Paultin and Van Richten or not. Wow. Strix decides to go back for them and yells, "Friendship!" Diath mutters "we're dead" over and over.

Strix casts darkness right on top of the group.. oh geez. She thinks her darkvision will work in there. Ohhh no. Paultin gets off the horse and puts Van Richten on.

Paultin and Diath hold hands in the magical darkness and everyone starts yelling "friendship!" Evelyn flies down and grabs onto Strix's horse, which is fleeing. She is "horse surfing."

Oh no. The vistani get on their horses. Paultin and Diath are running. The group actually makes it into the woods. Evelyn casts cure wounds on Van Richten, who was at 0 hit points. Evelyn summons Mourning Glory with a Disney Princess mini-tune, which is hilarious.

That's where we stop.

Overall

This one was funny and it flew by. It was very, very good. In my episode guide, I put an asterisk next to the best episodes of the entire series. I'm not sure if I am ready to hand out that prestigious award to this particular session. I think I'll wait a bit and check out the reaction online before making such a momentous decision.

Clip Show: I think that when this season is nearly over, they should make a youtube video that has clips of the best moments from the show so that people can get a good look at it without having to wade through so many hours of content. That way, new viewers can decide if they want to jump in on season 2. Season 2 should be awesome because the group has momentum and they're all comfortable in their roles.

Dragon Plus Issue 10

October 29, 2016, 6:52 pm

≫ Next: Adventures in Eberron - Soul of the Warforged

≪ Previous: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 27 - Curse of Strahd

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You can read this whole issue for free right here.

It is time once again for some of that sweet, sweet Dragon Plus digital freebie speculum. I know that is not the correct usage of the word "speculum" but I really just want to use it more in my life, so I'm shoehorning it in.

As always, this magazine is worth checking out at the very least for the free download. There's some nice Volo's Guide to Monsters previews and a big pile of free Curse of Strahd maps, each with a DM and a player version.

I'm pretty sure last month we had a new editor. That person appears to be gone already. This time, Bart Carroll is running the show.

In the editorial, he says he will be "...providing you, the readers, with material that supports your roleplaying campaigns, that entertains you between sessions, and that informs you of products that we and our partners are hard at work creating."

Deadstone Cleft

Wow. This is crazy. It's an adventure! Basically, they give you the option of running/"re-skinning" one of the dungeons in Storm King's Thunder so that it is combined with Ravenloft. Madame Eva is in it and one of the stone giants is transformed into a stone giant variation that will be in Volo's Guide to Monsters.

You actually do a tarokka deck reading and just like in Curse of Strahd, this determines plot points of the adventure.

They give us a link to a pdf of the new stone giant type. The link didn't work for me, but I was able to find the location.

Then we get articles articles on:

• Carving the Pumpkin Cover: The artist is ridiculously talented. They have a picture of a sand sculpture he did.. of Dante's Inferno! Fun fact: In college, I wrote an edgy short story called Dante's Inferno: Special Edition that was not well-received by the class due to the celebrities that I portrayed as being in Hell.
• Dungeonology: They give us a metric ton of images of pages from the book. I swear the book has about 30 pages and we get around 10 of them here. They are giving away 30% of the book!
• Betrayal on the House on the Hill Board Game Expansion: The people who worked on this thing are really, really fired up about it.
• Making the Gold Dragon Costume: We get a bunch of info on how the costume that Chris Perkins wore at the Acquisitions Inc game was made.

There's more stuff that is semi-related to D&D..

Holly: We also get an article where Holly, who plays Strix on Dice, Camera, Action, gives cosplay tips. She shows how to make scars, blood, pointy teeth, pointy ears. She is so awesome at this stuff and she's very versatile. She's good at sculpting, making props, making costumes, you name it.

Drizzt: There is an interview with R.A. Salvatore on the new Drizzt book. From what I understand, the entire line of D&D books is ending, so I guess this is the final Drizzt book? Here's what he says reader reaction to the end will be: "OK, now what? Wait. What?"

Best of the DMs Guild: We get a spotlight on a few products:

• Journey Through the Center of the Underdark
• Additional Archetypes

We get some more Volo's guide previews. I have trouble with the links again but I dug them up.

• Hag Traits and Names: I love the list of names. Here's my favorite combo: Rickety Agnes Wormwiggle. "Rickety" is a word that needs more use, in my opinion. Same with "jostle,""percolate," and "miasma."
• Annis Hag: It is not pronounced "anus." She can hug you and do 36 damage to you. It is extremely painful.
• Slithering Tracker: They look different than I remember them. They have sort of a John Carpetner's The Thing vibe going for them now.

Demogorgon: Prince of Demons

Shannon Appelcline whips up an article on Demogorgon and Stranger Things. This was too brief, but I liked what was there. I think Shannon had already written a big Demogorgon overview for the wizards site and maybe they didn't want to rehash it. Still good stuff, though.

Map of the Month

Then we get free maps! A bunch of the maps from Curse of Strahd, both tagged and untagged, all by Mike Schley. They even have my favorite, Baba Lysaga's Creeping Hut. This alone makes this issue worth it.

Unearthed Arcana: The Ranger
 

Mike Mearls writes about fixing the ranger class. I really appreciate the approach they take with this edition, which I think is the key to its massive success. They just listen to what people want and try to give it to them. They don't let personal preferences get in the way. I'd imagine this can be hard to do sometimes, but they do a really great job with it.

He actually says this: "Over the past year, you've seen us try a number of new approaches to the ranger, all aimed at addressing the class's high levels of player dissatisfaction and its ranking as D&D's weakest class by a significant margin."

It's really disorienting to see such frankness. There's no ego at all. All they care about is making a class that works.

Walkthrough Map

Then we get to the best thing of all. A walkthrough map of the entire Storm Giant dungeon from Storm King's Thunder! It's just awesome and really useful as a DM. The level of detail is insane.

Overall

I could say the same things every month. Dragon Plus is what it is. This issue feels better than some of the others and there's a lot less shilling in it. I also really appreciate the stab at presenting an adventure.

Dice Camera Action: As a DCA fan, I'd like if they would write an article about the campaign each issue. They could ask the players for insight into why they made the decisions they did. Actually, I'd like to see character sheets and a written background for each hero.

Essential Stuff: The most important thing to me each issue is that there is a walkthrough map, an Appelcline article and free stuff. This issue didn't have an Ed Greenwood article in it, which is a bummer. He should be in every issue, too.

Needs More: I still feel like there is not enough tabletop content. At the very least, I'd like some lists of stuff like in the back of old Paizo Dragon issues. "10 Inns,""40 weird NPCs," that kind of thing.

Adventures in Eberron - Soul of the Warforged

October 30, 2016, 8:44 am

≫ Next: Planescape - Lord Stillborn

≪ Previous: Dragon Plus Issue 10

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We played some more Eberron yesterday. I am a player in this campaign. My character is an 8th level sorcerer who is big and hairy.

Terrible News: I go out of my way not mention people's names in these blog posts. I checked with the DM if I could talk about this and he said it was OK.

I've played with this group for about 4 or 5 years. The DM is married and he and his wife are about 30 years old. They had a baby who is now 2 years old. A little over 3 weeks ago, my DM's wife passed away in her sleep. From what I understand, she had an undiagnosed heart condition and it was very sudden.

She was nice and really smart. She was a professor at a big college and she looked to me like a really great mom.

My DM is doing well under the circumstances and remains the polite, kind person he's always been.

He's going to have to sell his house and move back to another state. So this might have been our last session... we might do one more. It looks like we're going to try to keep the campaign going online through Skype, so we'll see.

His baby is doing very well, too. She's a really fun kid. She's shy at first, but then she warms up to you after a while.

The whole thing is just horrible and a total shock.

Last Time: We were in a dungeon looking for the soul of a warforged. Tonight we finished the dungeon.

We started off on the second floor. There was a long, twisting hallway that had prison cells and a few rooms. The cells held different monsters. It went like this:

1. Manes
2. Grell
3. Will o Wisp
4. 2 treasure chests
5. Snake Swarm
6. Ghoul
7. Quasit

There was a lever near each cell that could open them.

Being super cautious, we guessed correctly that pulling one lever would open all of the cells. We also guessed correctly that at least one of those chests was a mimic.

We decided to leave the cells alone. We ended up tackling this "Hallway of DOOM" at the end of this session.

There were three rooms in this hallway as well.

Portal Room: This room had a swirling vortex. We figured out that if we got close to it, it would suck us in and eject us into a random plane.

Loom Room: There was a loom and some spider thread. This was where drow made clothes/armor. The fighter found a pair of mithril scissors.

Library: Our wizard loves books and immediately began rifling through everything. We found a journal of the guy who once lived here. He was a wizard who studied evil creatures and apparently something bad happened to him. His name was Tyrien D'Shar. I think he is a real NPC from an Eberron book. This place was at one time a shrine to The Traveller, a sort of evil Eberron deity of luck.

It had since been transformed into a lair of followers of Lolth and Orcus.

We found a secret area with magic items. There was a dagger of warning, a staff of striking, and a wand of wonder. I was all over the wand. The DM knows I love random charts so he knew I would want this thing.

We took a short rest to learn what the items did, and another rest to attune to them. The other heroes were wounded really bad but forgot. So they didn't spend any hit dice. This obviously would become a problem very soon.

The Drow Mage

We heard noise in the hallway of doom. It was a drow who was in spider form wearing glasses. It went into the loom room.

We tried to sneak to the room but my stealth roll was really, really bad. The drow cast cloudkill under the door crack. This spell dropped everyone but me!

I quickly made myself invisible and used a potion on one of my allies. She got up and healed the fighter. She hit the spider with a gust of wind and the fighter plugged it with some arrows. Then the drow dropped them again with a lightning bolt spell.

The spider came out and headed down the hall. It had tremor sense so it sensed where I was. I said some swear in my character's Sean Connery voice. It is really fun to say "Shtupid Shun of a Bi-yutch" in a Sean Connery voice. I think I called this spider a "Fuck Faysh." I unleashed a fireball and killed him.

Thankfully we had loaded up on healing potions last session. I got my trusty allies up and we went and actually took a short rest.

The Bathroom Encounter

From there, we went upstairs to another level. We found a kitchen where humans were being cooked (yeargh). Because we are so careful and perception-checky, I found a gear. It would turn out that we'd need to find three gears to open the exit to this place.

In another room I found a gear in a clock. We came upon a bathroom. The shower curtain was closed. We pulled back the curtain, and found four suit of animated armor standing in there.

The door shut. The fighter and I were in the bathroom, the wizard was not. This was alarming because it was a tiny bathroom, meaning I was adjacent to these animated armors.

I cast dimension door so that the fighter and I could get out of there. To our dismay, we learned that the door was not locked! I could have just opened it and left. Instead I wasted a level four spell, which was pretty hilarious.

The armors walked through the door and we kicked the crap out of them with shocking grasp and shatter spells.

We found the last gear, a skull and a scroll of speak with dead. I kind of wonder if the skull belongs to Tyrien D'Shar.

We opened the exit with the gears. Before us was The Cogs, a section of the city of Sharn. We realized we hadn't fond the thing we came here for yet - the soul of the warforged.

The fighter had been pretty sure it was in the chest in the Hallway of Doom. So, down we went.

The Hallway of Doom

After some planning, we decided to open all of the cells and to just go nuts. We dragged the corpse of the spider/drow in front of the ghoul's cell, figuring that the ghoul would be distracted and would start eating it.

So I hit the lever and a train of monsters came at us. We dropped the quasit, the ghoul and the snake swarm with no problem. 

I had been worried about the will o wisp, but I was able to kill it with a single magic missile spell cast with a 3rd level slot.

The grell gave us some trouble. We defeated it and learned that one of those chests was, in fact, a mimic. I decided it was time to pull out the wand. I used it three times:

1. I stunned myself.
2. I made it rain in a 60 foot radius. The group killed the mimic.
3. I decided to use it one more time even though the bad guys were gone. I pointed in a safe direction and fired off a lightning bolt!

I love that thing.

In the chest we found a mini-castle. Basically, it's a magic castle that we need to go into to find the missing soul. It is likely guarded by the rakshasas I'm so worried about facing (they are immune to level 6 spells and lower!).

The DM did a thing where the castle was in pieces and we got to assemble it. We had to configure the rooms he had made on three floors. Basically, we built the dungeon that we'll be going through next session.

Overall

It was a very good session as always, and we might squeak in one more live session in November, depending on when his house gets sold.

Dungeons: I think this was the first big dungeon we've gone through in this campaign. Dungeons are really fun.  I don't like dungeons that are just rooms with monsters. I like ones where each room or area has a unique gimmick, and this one had that.

Monsters: The DM also does a really good job of portraying each monster like a fleshed-out creature rather than a list of stats. That goes a long way in making the game fun.

Wand of Wonder: I'm a little torn on using the wand. If I had my way, I'd use it all the time. I'm just afraid that some of the effects will hurt my allies. So for now, I'm going to try to use it only in situations where we're not in tons of danger.

Planescape - Lord Stillborn

October 31, 2016, 3:08 pm

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Last night we played some more Planescape. The group is 11th level and I am planning on having them hit level 12 in about 4 sessions.

Weak: It always feels like almost any monster can take them down. I have loaded them up with magic items to try to give them a boost, but they still feel weak for some reason.

Don't get me wrong, they aren't pushovers. Bidam gets three attacks per round and thanks to the sword of sharpness, does max damage on every hit. So that's something like 57 points of damage per round right there.

To prepare for tonight, I read up on demon summoning:

• Unearthed Arcana 5e demon summoning spells
• Dragon 317: Truenames and Fetishes
• Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

Summoning: Lost Caverns has a fantastic description of the different summoning circles you can make and how it all works. It is very handy. The summoned creature loses one point of INT per day when they are trapped, so after a week or two, the creature is useless as far as being someone worth interrogating. That's pretty clever, IMO.

The group is helping their demon ally merge her abyssal realm with  Graz'zt's Triple Realm of Azzagrat. I had no idea how this could be done, so I did some reading. From older editions, there is a spell called "planar breach" that literally creates such a connection between two planes.

So the tentative plan here goes like this:

• Tonight: The heroes check out their little kingdoms in Azzagrat.
• Next Week: Planar breach is cast and the merging is very tumultuous. It will be like a disaster movie sort of adventure.
• The Week After: Graz'zt tries to connect his city, Zelatar, to the new plane. I'm not sure how this will go yet.
• Ultimately, the group betrays Grazzt. Not sure how that will go, either. Graz'zt is insanely powerful!

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Half-Dabus/Half-Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

Last Time: The group and their demon lord friend, Bazuuma, cut a deal with Graz'zt. She's going to marry him and merge her abyssal layer with his.

As part of the deal, the adventurers were each granted rulership of a ruined area of Azzagrat:

• Theran: Skyshrine, an earthmote where air genies once traded with the demons.
• Bidam: Allagash, a demon breeding ground that was over-run by demons of Orcus.

Return to Sigil

Sigil

The group headed back to Sigil and went on a mission. They needed Amulets of Proof against Detection and Location. With the amulets, they wouldn't have to worry about enemy agents scrying on them and learning about their secret plan to betray Graz'zt. They did a quick little tour through Sigil, buying amulets at A'kin the Friendly Fiend's, Tivvum's Antiquities and the Great Bazaar.

Theran also bought rings of joining for the secret wedding between Bidam and Bazuuma. Rings of joining were a 2e magic item where each person who wore one could see and hear what the other person was doing.

Bidam had a vision of the Orcusword, which shattered during the Dead Gods adventure. A few sessions back, Bidam made a dark pact with Tenebrous (the undead remains of Orcus) and now every session it urges him to do stuff. Bidam had a vision of the Orcusword being repaired by the golem known as Coaxmetal who lives in Undersigil.

Theran helped Seoni out with her dreams. It turns out that Seoni is being contacted by the Codex of the Infinite Planes. It is eating her soul, slowly. Theran figured this out really quickly. He's not sure what he can do about it, though.

All of this is just to kind of set the stage for the Codex of Infinite Planes adventure that I'll run in around 15-20 sessions from now.

The Secret Wedding

The next day, it was back to the abyssal realm of Burningwater, where Bidam married the demon lord of positivity, Bazuuma. My Donald Trump NPC conducted this wedding. The group hated him, and dumped him in the river styx many sessions ago. He has no memory of who he is, but he's still very Trumpy.

This wedding was an excuse to use real life Donald Trump quotes and work them into D&D for jokes:

• "We're joining with Azzagrat. Azagrat is a complete catastrophe beyond imagination. Demons are leaving, monsters are quitting, merchants are fleeing, torturers hours are being cut, part time jobs are all over the place and deductibles are through the roof. You don't get to use it. If we don't get rid of Azzagrat, the Abyss will be gone forever."
• "Bidam is rich, he's famous. He sees beautiful women and he just starts kissing them. He grabs them by the pussy and he gets away with it because he's famous!"

They put on their rings of joining and had a honeymoon skill challenge that Bidam barely survived through a series of constitution saving throws. He used indomitable, which helped him reroll a bad roll.

Iggwilv's Reward

Theran is an apprentice to Iggwilv, the Witch Queen. He had found out some demon truenames in the Whispering Library. She was greatly pleased.

Iggwilv rewarded him by allowing him to study a book called "Thesis on the Planes of Antimatter" by Leomund of Leomund's secret chest fame. This book has a magic item formula for a cubic gate. The group has a cubic gate, but it got damaged in an abyssal storm. 3 of the six buttons don't work. Theran can use this to repair the gate and choose 3 new planar locations that it can take the group to.

Iggwilv is working on taking control of a demon lord named Codricuhn, who is from 4th edition. He has a really cool story:

• He was an elemental lord of the sea's fury
• He was transformed into a "bloated bag of blood and filth" by the Chained God. He is hundreds of feet tall.
• His mind did not change - all he really wants is to go back to the way he was. His body operates on its own.
• One day he will finish his ascent and emerge from the blood rift. At that time, he will destroy the prime material plane, the feywild, and the shadowfell. The Abyss will spread everywhere.
• There are 6 semi-demon lords who have floating islands that orbit him as he climbs.

Using her truename, Iggwilv summoned The Lady of Sorrows into a pentagram. She began aggressively interrogating her. Theran's job was to hit her with spells to get her to talk.

I was wondering if he would feel conflicted by this. Iggwilv is evil, but so is the Lady. The Lady is kind of sad, though. She collects Codricuhn's tears and yearns for "perfect mortal love."

Theran had no problem with this at all. He did have a problem figuring out what spells to use. Iggwilv got really mad at him when he started launching lightning bolts at the Lady. The Lady of Sorrows is a marilith, so she has resistance to lightning.

Theran really struggled here trying to figure out what spells to use. Iggwilv started flipping out on him. I run her like she's calm when things go her way, but she gets extremely dark and vicious when you fail her.

Theran eventually settled on using chromatic orb spells that do acid damage. The Lady spilled all of the above information and more. Once Iggwilv had enough for the day, she left the room.

The Lady reached out to Theran, begging him to free her. I thought it would be fun to dance around the idea that Theran could be her "perfect mortal love." I should note that her realm is dotted with lakes that have other "perfect loves" floating in them.

He showed no sympathy at all! He didn't buy in and didn't feel bad in the least. I thought he'd be conflicted about what he was being forced to do. I'd be conflicted! But he wasn't. It was interesting.

Skyshrine

The next day, the adventurers returned to Azzagrat to inspect and clean up their little domains. They decided to explore Theran's realm of Skyshrine first. He was given two underlings:

• Lynxia: A tattooed succubus he'd befriended way back when the group first adventured in Azzagrat. 
• A Vrock: He was also given a vrock (vulture demon) as a personal guard.

I built Skyshrine using Cloud Giant's Bargain. As they explored, the heroes were hunted by a Pathfinder villain who goes by the name of LORD STILLBORN.

His story goes like this:

• The air genies lived in Skyshrine and traded with the demons.
• The queen of the air genies seduced Graz'zt.
• She got in Graz'zt's ear and told him to let her replace his sidekick, Verin.
• Verin, a demon lord in his own right, found out. He went to Skyshrine and killed the queen.
• Verin told her air genie subjects to leave and never to return. They did. Six months later, they were all dead.
• The Queen was pregnant. Her unborn baby became undead and is now the monstrosity known as LORD STILLBORN.

Edgelords: My group gets amused at the forced "edginess" of some Pathfinder products. For me, I'd rather they didn't use phrases like "maiden of miscarriage," or declare that rapers worship Nocticula. I just don't want those ideas in my game at all in any way. I'm not thrilled with suicide demons, either.

I mean, I can always reskin or modify them, and I do. It's just a little too 'real' for me and I'd be concerned to use them at a table where someone might have had a miscarriage or been raped. We're playing this game to get away from that stuff, not having it waggled in our face.

An undead genie fetus is pretty borderline, but I felt it was ridiculous enough to go ahead and try.

Stalking the Heroes: I did a thing with Lord Stillborn that I always want to do more of. I had him stalk the group as he explored.

First, when the adventurers were in the library, I had Lord Stillborn used a sort of telekinetic wind power to send Theran flying out a window and hurtling to the ground 150 feet below.

Falling in D&D: When preparing something like this, I always debate with myself. Should the hero get an extra save to grab onto something to prevent their fall? I feel like I always make the wrong choice, no matter what it is. I want the fight to be dramatic, but it often comes off as too easy or too brutal.

Theran failed his first save and went hurtling through the window. He made his dex save, grabbing onto the huge chain that connected the earthmote to the ground. Fall from Grace flew over and saved him.

Stillborn turned invisible and fled.

The heroes went into a temple and learned about the history of Skyshrine from a gargoyle.

Then they came upon a gallery. Again, Lord Stillborn sent Theran flying, but he made his first save. Theran's robe of eyes allows him to see invisible, so he fired off a spell. Lord Stillborn was able to get away.

The final showdown came in the throne room. I put a trap in front of the throne, where a lever could be pulled that would open a trap door and send the group plummeting to their doom. All of them made their saves!

Bidam hated Lord Stillborn and took great delight in killing him with a natural 20. Skyshrine was theirs.

Allagash

Rot Harbinger

Allagash was a demon breeding ground where they were trying to create new types of demons. The D&D demon wiki was a fantastic resource for this. I put in a whole bunch of perverted stuff that you probably don't want to hear about.

This place was overrun with Rot Harbingers - servants of Orcus from the 4e monster manual. They were originally angels who attacked Orcus. He turned them into undead abominations that can rot things with a touch.

The rot harbingers were going to attack the adventurers, but they sensed Bidam's connection to their master and backed off. Bidam can't order them around until he reassembles the Orcusword.

The heroes explored the ruins and I presented them with all sorts of gross devices and experiments.

They found a partially-ruined scroll that listed some of the experiments. They saw that the demons had somehow merged a beholder and a mind flayer into something called a "Mindwitness."

This is a monster from Volo's Guide to Monsters. I figured I'd try it out. Looking at the encounter building rules, one of them is easy, two is considered "deadly."

So I had one show up and attack and I planned on having a second one show up if things were too easy.

Boy, were they easy. The group rolls high on initiative all the time. I don't know why. They won initiative and killed the first one before it got to go! It had 75 hit points. The second one at least got to fire off its eye rays, but the group made their saves. The battle was short. Bidam did get hit once for 27 psychic, but I really wanted more peril. I mean.. it's a mind flayer/beholder hybrid! It should be tough!

I think part of the problem was that I had them calmly approach the group and wait for them to be ready to roll initiative. I could have had the mindwitness be high in the air or far away. I could have tried to give the bad guys surprise. But I was afraid it would be too hard, so I erred on the side of caution. It was still cool to introduce them, but I feel the need to try to use them again so I can give them the respect they deserve.

It was a very good session! We've been on a roll for a long time and we are on another upswing right now. The Iron Shadow stuff ended up being a bit of a drag in parts and now that it's over, things feel simple, loose and fun again.

Dungeons & Dragons - Volo's Guide to Monsters Preview

October 31, 2016, 7:54 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Plane of Positive Energy

≪ Previous: Planescape - Lord Stillborn

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This book isn't out yet, but there is a metric ton of preview material out for it. I figured I'd make this page a hub of links for all of the previews out so far and I'll go over what we can learn from them. I'll have a real review up once the book comes out.

You can buy Volo's Guide to Monsters here.

Preview Links

• D&D Official Preview Page: Froghemoth, giants, etc.
• Dragon Plus Issue 10: Hag, Annis Hag, Slithering Tracker
• Gizmodo: Nilbogs, barghests, hobgoblins kobolds.
• Kotaku: Gnolls, flind stats, lizardfolk, yuan-ti nightmare speaker stats.
• Polygon: Mindflayer info, mindwitness stats, beholder stuff, orc gods, tanarukk stats.
• Paste Magazine: Giants, firbolg info, goliath lore, stone giant dreamwalker stats.

Preface: We get a look at how this book is written. It's written "in character." Volo is a traveler who writes guides. Elminster is a legendary wizard who is not a fan of Volo. From what I understand, Ed Greenwood wrote Elminster's stuff.

Chapter 1: Monster Lore

Page 7Beholders: Apparently one beholder can "dream" another beholder into existence. In previous editions, they barfed up an egg. This whole page is about the dreaming and how different dreams or nightmares create different versions of beholders.

Page 23Giants: We get bonds, ideals, flaws, etc. We get some info on cloud giants. They are no longer able to make cloud castles. That's kind of weird.

Page 27Frost Giants: We get some info on frost giants. Weaker ones sometimes begin to worship Vaprak, who turns them into an "everlasting one,"which is a giant of great power.

Page 34Gnoll Info: It says Yeenoghu is possibly the most active demon lord on the Material Plane. 

Page 38More Gnolls: Wow, it looks like there are at least 6 pages devoted to gnoll lore. There is a mention of maw demons. I hope that means that there are new demons in this book.

Page 43Goblins: We get a little info on goblins using wild magic, which sounds great.

Page 55Hags: There's a list of hag ideals, bonds, names, etc. I love this ideal: "I will metamorphose into every kind of hag and live a century as each, becoming something greater in the end." I wonder if there are any hags nearing the end of that process now?

I like this, too: "I traded away something before I realized it was priceless, and now I want it back." That seems like a pretty sweet thing to set up with a character.

I love this one: "I cannot tell a lie, but I can still say nothing, nod suggestively, or bend the truth a little to suit my needs." That's really fun, especially once the heroes figure this out.

Page 64Kobolds: We get a quick recap of Kurtulmak's story, which I think is just like it's been in previous editions. He got tricked by a gnome god and lives in tunnels (in Hell, I think).

Page 72Mind flayers: The authors integrate tons of awesome stuff from one of my all-time favorite supplements, the Illithiad.

Ceremorphosis is a plot device that seems under-used in D&D. That is when the mind flayers stick a tadpole in your head and, over the course of a week, you become a mind flayer. The flayer retains a few of its original memories. It would be cool to have this happen to an NPC who still sort of remembers you.

"In some ways, a mind flayer colony is like a great library of lore stored within its members' minds, with the elder brain as its librarian."

(No page number) This page has a great "dissection" image of a mindflayer. Most of the time, these monster dissection drawings don't come out tight, but this one is very cool. This page goes over creatures related to mind flayers:

• Intellect Devourers: Brains with four legs.
• Mindwitnesses: Mind flayer/beholders. It acts as a psychic hub for a colony and can collect psionic power.
• Neothelids: Sometimes, when tadpole pools are left untended, the tadpoles attack each other and the survivor grows into a thing like a purple worm. Mind flayers fear them.

Page 83Orc Stuff: Ilneval, the right-hand man of Gruumsh, has certain chosen orcs who are masters of strategy. Baghtru is the big, Hulk-y son of Gruumsh. Young orcs revere Baghtru and do really cruel things to each other.

Chapter 2: Character Races

Firbolg

Page 105Goliath: We get a page on one of my favorite races, the goliath. They don't understand social classes. They think that people should be positioned according to talent. Adults who can't contribute to the tribe are expelled. Goliaths die young... often, when they become 'useless,' they slip "...away into the night to seek the cold will of fate."

Page 107Firbolg: These creatures have blue skin and reddish noses. They are up to 8 feet tall and they can can talk to plants and animals. Once per day they can cast either detect magic or disguise self. That's handy! I really love the idea of naming a Firbolg after the typo version of their name: "Fireblog."

Page 112Lizardfolk: They are emotionally different. They think nothing of eating a fallen comrade in battle. I find this quirk quite amusing: "You have learned to laugh. You use this talent in response to all emotional situations, to better fit it with your comrades."

Breathless NPC: "The King has been poisoned!"

Mike the Lizardfolk: "Ho ho hoo! Oh myyy!"

Chapter 3 Bestiary

Page 123Barghest: They are goblins who can shapeshift into big, evil wolf-monsters. They have a very specific goal: Consume the souls of 17 goblins. Basically, they are part of a revenge plot by the General of Gehenna, a yugoloth NPC that has a surprising amount of lore attached to him. I have no idea if this is new or an old concept but I really like it.

Page 125Gauth: This is a beholder variant that eats magic and can drain magic items. Yikes. When you start your turn near it, you must save or be stunned! It has an eye ray that can de-power a magic item for a time.

Page 145Froghemoth: We get the stats and everything. It is possible that a froghemoth will swallow you and then vomit you back up, which is amusing. I love this part: "A journal purportedly written long ago by the wizard Lum the Mad describes strange, cylindrical chambers of metal buried in the ground from which froghemoths emerged."

What's the deal with Lum the Mad, anyway? I feel like I should dig around and see what info is out there on this person.

According to wikipedia, he was a warlord on Greyhawk who had an artifact known as the Infernal Machine. Then he fell into Limbo, but the machine kept him alive. Sounds pretty cool.

Page 150Stone Giant Dreamwalker: This monster has an aura that charms and it can turn you to stone by touching you! It's got a challenge rating 10 and the save DC is a 17. It seems like they beefed up the monsters a bit.

Storm Giant Quintessant: They turn themselves into semiconscious storms and can revert to giant form when they like. It can form elemental weapons out of thin air.

Page 153Flind: A gnoll with a special connection to the demon lord Yeenoghu. It has a flail that deals out three different effects, each of which are very nasty.

Page 162Hobgoblin Iron Shadow: These ladies are the secret police of the hobgoblins. They are assassins and spies who wear devil masks. I gotta say, the devil mask in the art accompanying this is pretty goofy. These are CR 2 monsters that make 4 attacks! They can teleport from one dark space to another.

Page 166Kobold Inventor: These are like the kobolds from the 4e DMG adventure Kobold Hall. They chuck pots full of stuff. Lots of good ideas! Basket of centipedes, green slime pot and a skunk in a cage. That's great.

Page 171Alhoon: These are sort of mind flayer liches. Instead of a phylactery, they use a periapt of mind trapping. They live as long as the lifespan of those they sacrificed to become an alhoon.

Page 176Mindwitness: This is about as awesome as it gets. This thing is a cross between a mind flayer and a beholder! It has eye rays, it can stun you with a grab, really awesome.

Page 182Nilbog: We get stats for these goblin variants. If you try to attack them, you must make a save or be charmed. It also has the ability to reduce damage to 0 and regain d6 hit points! It is a spirit of a shattered trickster god, and killing it just means that the nilbog possesses another goblin.

Page 186Tanarukk: This creature is a cross between a demon and an orc. I much prefer how they looked in 3rd edition. It says here that Baphomet is involved in creating tanarukks, corrupting an unborn orc. Some tribes actually kill tanarukks when they are born (!).

Page 191Slithering Tracker: When a person has a deep desire for revenge, they can get a hag or lich to turn them into a slithering tracker. Most of them go mad and forget their true purpose.

Page 205Yuan-ti Nightmare Speaker: It can cast a ton of spells. It's a CR 4. It can create illusions of your nightmares to frighten you.

Thoughts

 

The Grung

This looks like a fun book. It seems like they are making lower level monsters tougher. The stat blocks are also getting bigger, which I don't like. I do love it when they compile and build on old lore, and that seems to be a huge part of this product.

Quotes: The book really doesn't have much Volo/Elminster banter in the actual text, which is good. It is mostly in the form of quotes. I loved the quotes from various NPCs in the Monster Manual and I'm bummed that most of them seem to be from Volo and Elminster in this book. I get a kick out of trying to dig up obscure NPCs and monsters. I can't figure who almost half of the quoted people in the MM are.

Muppet Overload: My one concern about this book is that there is too much focus on 'whimsical' monsters. I don't mind them. Almost every session I run includes a creature described as if it were a fraggle with floofy hair.

I want a certain amount of "badass" monsters in my monster books and I'm not sure if this is going to cut the mustard. The mind flayer stuff alone makes me happy so it's not the end of the world, but right now it looks like there is too much stuff like the nilbog, firbolg, froghemoth, and those grung frog-creatures (do we really need another frog-person race?).

It's not that big a deal. The book looks great. We'll see what the final verdict is in just a few weeks.

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Plane of Positive Energy

November 1, 2016, 10:22 pm

≫ Next: Planescape - Planar Breach

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Today I want to look at a weird little corner of the D&D universe that doesn't get a lot of attention. The Plane of Negative Energy is pretty easy to imagine - it is a place of blackness and evil. Positive energy, to me, is interesting because I can't think of how to make it a cool, fun place to have an adventure in. 

What can be done in a realm of healing and light? It turns out there's a lot of awesome ideas for this plane that have flown under the radar for years.

Here's what I learned: This is the place that souls come from.

I am going to try to present to you an outline of published content for it so you can check it out and see if it fits into your campaign in some way. I'm also going to detail the Quasi-plane of Radiance, because it is linked to the plane of positive energy and there was a pretty epic article about it in Dragon Magazine.

This guide uses material from a few main products:

• The Inner Planes
• 3e Manual of the Planes
• Bastion of Broken Souls

Categories of Planes: This plane doesn't appear to even be in the official 5e cosmology. In older editions, it is one of the "Inner Planes." I've always found the subdivisions of the planes very confusing. Here are the main categories:

• The Inner Planes: These are the elemental planes (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) as well as the Positive and Negative Material Planes. 
• The Outer Planes: This is where most planes dwell, including The Abyss, Hell, Celestia, etc. 
• The Transitive Planes: The Ethereal Plane, Astral Plane, the Shadowfell and the Feywild.

I feel that I should also note that the ethereal plane is loaded with demiplanes - planes within a plane.

There is also The Outlands (aka The Plane of Concordant Opposition). This is a central area that spans from the center of the multiverse (the city of Sigil) to the Outer Planes.

The Essential Information

• The plane of positive energy bombards you with healing until you explode. 
• You need to cast positive energy protection to safely traverse this plane.
• You need to protect your eyes or you will go blind.
• This plane is connected to the quasi-planes of lightning, minerals, radiance, and steam.
• Lifepearls: Sometimes, positive energy congeals into lifepearls that can heal the sick and restore the dead.
• The Bastion of Unborn Souls: A place where souls grow on crystal trees. This is where souls come from.
• Quesars: These constructs built by angels guard celestial treasures and are incredibly powerful.
  
• Energy Pillar: A huge wall of advancing white brilliance, swallowing and immolating everything in its path.
• Rainbows in the material plane sometimes have portals that link to the rainbow bridge in the Plane of Radiance.
• There is a rainbow waterfall that is a portal to anywhere you want to go. It is guarded by a radiant titan.

AD&D 1st Edition

In the Manual of the Planes, we get a snazzy overview.

You Explode: When you go here, you gain 2d6 hit point per round. Once that number exceeds twice your max total, you... explode!

Overhealing: If you get out of the plane before you blow up, you keep those hit points for d20 turns (an AD&D 'turn' is is 10 minutes).

Protection: To travel here, you need to use a spell called positive plane protection. It can't be cast in the plane, it must be done prior to the visit.

No Oxygen: You can't breathe here - you'll need to have a spell or item that can sustain you.

Other Notes: 

• There is no ruler of this plane.
• Vision is limited to 30 feet.
• Items created by spells that create matter are destroyed by the plane in one round and become "...a rainbow of harmless motes.."
• Spells always do maximum damage.

Towers: In this plane are a scattered group of great floating towers made of blue flame, lead, solidified clouds or ice. Most are abandoned. Some contain wizards, druids, or exiled Powers from the Lower Planes (!).

There are four Positive Quasi-Planes: Lightning, Radiance, Minerals, and Steam.

The Quasi-Plane of Radiance: When you go here, you need to make a save or you will go blind.

• Darkness spells let you see normally, or you could wear glasses with "smoked lenses" (sunglasses).
• There are actual rainbows of flame here.

Radiant Quasi-elemental: These creatures span the entire spectrum of color. They are very hyper, continually move and change. They can be driven off by darkness spells.

AD&D 2nd Edition

The Inner Planes: This book has a lot of great little ideas in it. I love the notion of a party of adventurers coming to this plane to find a life pearl to raise a fallen friend.

• In this plane, you gain 2d6 hp per round. Once that number doubles your hit point total, you are blasted into pulverized flames.
• Objects appearing here save vs disintegration or are destroyed.
• Darkness magic is snuffed out. 
• Protective Spell: Positive Plane Protection (the 3e version of this spell is right here). 
• You can't breathe here, but the plane sustains you. You have no need to eat here, either. 
• You will go blind within a day. You can wear a blindfold to negate the effects, and you will be able to see through it. You also gain danger sense 25 feet 
• The Planescape faction known as the transcendent order has a "Fortress of Life" here.  

Lifepearls: This is "concentrated creation," an energy seed that could form a new race or plane. These items can heal the sick and restore the dead! These pearls have the powers of a staff of curing and a rod of resurrection with a total of 4d10 charges

D&D 3rd Edition

In the 3e Manual of the Planes, this plane is "...a continual furnace of creation..."

Energy Bursts: Regions that erupt like miniature suns, doling out 3d10 temporary hit points. You also must save or be blind for d10 rounds.

Animating fields: Invisible regions that can animate objects. If you stumble into one, there's a 50% chance each round that one of your items animates and attacks.

Edge Zone: Safe, hospitable places that have floating towers and shards of other planes.

The Hospice: A floating citadel that is home to holy knights.

• They restore badly-wounded individuals back to health.
• Protected by golems.
• Home to good-aligned individuals from a dozen planes.

Imprisoning Cells: Powerful individuals get imprisoned in floating cells here. They are eventually opened by a curious traveler or sucked into a vortex to another plane.

Energon: Coalescence of energy with an alien intelligence. Xag-yas are from the positive plane, xeg-yis are negative.

• They favor places that birth or death is occurring.
• Blow up if killed.
• Can infuse targets with positive energy, healing 2d8+5.

Bastion of Broken Souls

This is a really high level adventure dealing with Demogorgon and a powerful red dragon named Ashardalon. It has a massive section set in the positive energy plane and it is really fantastic.

It has flavor for the plane:

"This is a place of brilliant white. Pulsating brilliance bleaches out the spectrum and creates stark shadows. Anything more than 5 feet away becomes an indistinct blot of darkness moving against the white background—the blots nearby are certainly your companions. Distance is impossible to gauge within this brilliant environment."

The Bastion of Unborn Souls: This floating building is made of solidified positive energy. It is impenetrable to magical/psionics/scrying.

• "Only a deity could bring sufficient force to bear and physically force an entrance..."
• The exterior constantly changes - 3d snowflake, a pulsing crystal, etc. It is 10 miles in diameter
• To get to the center of the complex, you must be "attuned" to the building by passing through 8 specific rooms.
• This building is "...one of many soul fonts.."
• Inside, crystalline trees sprout preincarnate souls.
• When a  'ripe' soul falls from the tree in a flash of brighter light - the preincarnate soul takes off, soon to incarnate somewhere in the multiverse. 
• "If picked before it is ripe, the preincarnate soul withers and dies within 10 rounds."
• Eating or destroying a soul "...dooms a creature somewhere in the multiverse to a soulless birth."

Creatures: There are a lot of weird creatures inside the bastion:

• Soulsippers: They can pull out your soul and eat it. You can't be raised. You are gone forever.
• Soulscapers: Sentient gardeners/druids of energy that fight on the side of the cycle of life.  
• Crystal Screamers: Parasites who feed on unborn souls

Getting In: Gaining entry to the bastion is really hard. You need a piece of the soul totem, an item that has been shattered into three pieces. In fact, you can't even find the bastion unless you have a piece of the soul totem.

• Ashardalon has one. He's the colossal red dragon villain of this adventure. He's already inside eating souls.
• Demogorgon has one.
• Desayus has one. Desayus is a god who tried and failed to gain control of all unborn souls. He is trapped in a vault in the plane of Pandemonium.

Ring of Positive Energy Protection: This black iron ring enables the wearer to ignore the blinding effect of the Positive Energy Plane. The wearer does not gain the fast healing ability usually conferred by a positive-dominant plane, nor does the character gain additional hit points when he reaches his normal maximum. Spells that channel positive energy - typically healing spells - have no effect on the wearer.

Here's monsters linked to the plane of positive energy from a variety of 3e books:

Glimmerskin: This is a thrill-seeking parasite. It inhabits a willing host and takes the form of radiant armor or a robe. It has a craving for combat and urges you to get into a rumble. It heals you for 5 points per round and gives you a bonus to hit and to your AC.

Lumi: This is weird. These guys don't have necks. Their heads float slightly above their bodies. They build towering cities in the plane of positive energy. They worship light as a concept. They shed light at all times, can't be blinded, and because they have a floating head so they can't be suffocated.

They have rulers known as "High Ecclesiastics" who meet in hidden cathedrals. They are devoted to wiping out liars and deceivers. They literally want to commit genocide on every liar in existence.

Movanic Deva: They are the "rank-and-file soldiers in the never-ending war of good against evil." They can cast raise dead once per day and they are immune to magical death effects.

They serve the needs of the material plane, the negative plane and the positive plane. They have milky white skin and silvery eyes. No animal or plant will attack them and they can deflect spells with their flaming swords.

Quesar: These creatures are constructs created by angel to guard over treasures.They have blue skin and they emit radiant energy "..like a star brought to ground."  They have the power to blind everyone in a 120 foot radius! They can fire off bursts of energy that hits all within 15 feet for 22d6 and acts as a disintegrate spell. 

Ravid: These are 7 foot long serpents. Inanimate objects near them come alive and follow them around. Their tail injures undead and doles out an "..unpleasant tingle in living creatures..."

Vivacious Creature: I find the name very amusing. This is a 'template' to slap on a creature. They can fly. They can shoot a ray of positive energy that heals the living and harms the undead. They have an aura that heals you one hit point per round. This creature is vivacious indeed.

Dragon Magazine #371 - The Limitless Light

This is "a tour of the plane of radiance."

• The sky is full of shimmering, ever-changing lights. Below is a "twilight bowl" with no gravity filled with stars of every color.
• There are drifting islands that coast about on planar winds.
• When you arrive, you must make a DC 15 will save or be fascinated indefinitely unless someone snaps you out of it.
• Light spells are enhanced.
• Darkness spells require a check.

The Rainbow Bridge: There's a 15 foot wide indestructible rainbow bridge that connects floating islands. The rainbow bridge extends to other planes. Whenever a rainbow appears on the prime material plane, there is a chance it has a portal to the plane of radiance.

The Portal to Anywhere: One part of the bridge leads to a huge, roaring multi-colored waterfall that pours from a gigantic, crystal prism onto the bridge. The place where the waterfall strikes is a portal to anywhere, any time. It is guarded by a radiant titan name Riis, who wields a sword called crystal lightning.

Radiant Clouds: Enter one and you might be dazed for d4 minutes.

Chromatic Tornado: It 6d6 damage and hits you with a color spray spell (!!) every round until you are expelled from it.

Glimmerfolk

Creatures: This quasi-plane is home to couatls, lammasus, will-o-wisps and lillends. There are also some harpies, rakshasas and ravids.

New Level 6 Cleric Spell: Rainbow: Summon a rainbow-hued longbow, along with a full quiver of arrows. each color arrow has a different effect.

Floating City: This is Conil-a-ald (aka the Harp of Glass) It is a vast city on an island with towers of spun glass and streets of opal.

• Violence is prohibited in the city.
• Ruler: Chysera of the Luminescent voice, a lillend.
• She has 7 childen who preserve and create art.
• Citizens are glimmerfolk, lillends, sphinxes, and a few gnomes and humans.

There is an accompanying article with a few new races and monsters.

Glimmerfolk: Humans with gold skin and halos known as "nimlis." They nimlis are 3 globes of immaterial colored light floating nearby. Glimmerfolk can use them to cast a spell, causing it to 'burn out' for the day. The more nimlis they burn out, the more powerful the spell:

• Use 1: Dancing lights, daze, flare.
• Use 2: Color spray or magic missile.
• Use 3: Mirror image or invisibility.

Prismfly Swarm: Flesh-eating prismflies look like fireflies, have crystal abdomens that flash different colors.

Radiant Creatures: "Afire with the light of a rising son.. a semi-translucent mass of shimmering, shifting colors and sparkling lights." They have a rainbow aura which dazzles people within 30 feet.

Rainbow Dweller: Humanoid shape made up of flowing, luminescent colors and bursts of sparkling life. They have a translucent humanoid form and alien psychologies. They have all sorts of powers:

• Color Burst: 15 foot radius burst of shocking, brilliant light.
• If you fail a save, looking at them fascinates you for as long as it is in range.

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Planescape - Planar Breach

November 7, 2016, 1:58 pm

≫ Next: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 28 - Curse of Strahd

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Plane of Positive Energy

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Grazz't and Iggwilv

We just finished up another session of Planescape and, as always, it was fun. Planescape is ridiculously deep. I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of the setting. You could easily run an entire campaign in the city of Sigil and not even use the Outlands or the other planes at all. I'd actually like to do that someday.

Marvel Movies & D&D: I have been sick this past week and I watched a lot of movies. I saw Captain America: Civil War and it really exemplified what I think is one of the most important things when it comes to telling a story that people care about. There's a scene where the heroes fight each other. It's not to the death. They pull their punches. But there are still high stakes and concrete consequences. A lot of reviewers said that was the best scene in the movie.

Not Always to the Death: I think it is important to always keep in mind that not every battle should be to the death. When you vary the stakes, it adds a lot of realism and communicates the feeling that your world is alive.

I decided to put in an encounter like this tonight since it was on my brain. At the end of this one, the group has to try to take a tapestry from a greedy ally who is probably too powerful for them to kill, and killing this person would be "political suicide."

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

Last Time: The group is friends with a "good" demon lord named Bazuuma who rules an abyssal lair called Burningwater. She has cut a deal with Grazzt, a demon lord who rules three abyssal layers. She is going to marry him and together they will rule all four layers.

The problem here is that Bazuuma is secretly married to Bidam and that she's going to try to steal Grazzt's three realms from him!

Downtime

Seoni, who is probably doomed

We started off with a bunch of little stuff that follows up from the events of last session. This always goes over really well. I want to make sure that the players feel like their choices from last time mattered.

The group tidied up their new abyssal domains:

Skyshrine: Theran's earthmote and former home to air genies:

• Living Spellbook: Theran's assistant offered to let Theran tattoo spells on her. I wonder what a 'living scroll' would be like?
• Old Feller: Theran interacted with this old air genie who's been sitting in a sauna in Skyshrine for 3 years. He's just a comedy character and an excuse for me to do an old man voice.
• Iggwilv Getting Grabby: Iggwilv wants to use this place as one of her lairs. Theran was quite annoyed at this. Each session, Iggwilv is getting more demanding and sinister.

Allagash: Bidam's "demon sex farm":

• The Orcusword: Bidam reached out to Tenebrous (aka undead Orcus). Bidam was sent another vision telling him he needed to repair the Orcusword for the Rot Harbingers to follow his orders.
• Meatballs: Three sad sack demon males showed up to sign up for the breeding program. Bidam realized it will be easier to recruit males rather than females.

Secret Plans: Bazuuma had a secret meeting with the group. She wants them to go check out the plane of positive energy. She's a demon lord of positive energy and thinks she might need a place to flee to if things go badly.

Next session the group will go there. I'm excited, because there is a lot of really cool material for that place.

The group did some stuff in Sigil and then it was time for the main adventure.

Nalen Blackstar

Spell from the Codex of the Infinite Planes adventure

Planar Breach is a 7th level spell. It is going be cast by Nalen Blackstar, a wizard from "Nemesis." Nalen has some cool items from that adventure:

• Shaktari's Necklace: In 2e terms, it lets you cast spells as if you were a wizard 5 levels higher.
• Wizardbane: A mind flayer's soul is trapped in this sword. It grants the wielder magic resistance and the ability to cast levitate, detect thoughts and plane shift once per day.

I played up that Nalen is self-conscious about his hairpiece, as that factors in to the final encounter.

The group took Nalen and some agents of Grazzt on a tour of Bazuuma's layer. A few things happened:

• Tension: The group noticed that Grazzt's marilith guard hates Nalen. Nalen did some really awful things to a marilith in "Nemesis."
• Secret Demon: There was a hooded, dark demon with Nalen. The group didn't pay him much mind. This is Ztefano, a demon lord. I was wondering if the group would learn his secret, but they didn't pay him much mind.
• Cabiri: Nalen got a look at the shrine of Cabiri, the obyrith who used to rule this layer. I want to play up Cabiri because he factors in to an upcoming Blood War adventure.

The Bay of Choking Bile

Chaos Ship flying in the Abyss

Then the group went to the Bay of Choking Bile in Grazzt's realm. The 4e Demonomicon says that Grazzt keeps his ships here, so I detailed a few.

• Grazzt's Chaos Ship: I am planning on using this in the Blood War. Back in 4e, my group got the chaos ship of Orcus and it was pretty awesome.
• A manta ray ship: This is a smalljammer, a "shuttle" that is linked to the actual Spelljammer vessel.
• The Ebony Queen: A ship made of obsidian (taken from Secrets of the Lamp) with an incubus captain known as "the dark-eyed stranger." I saw that phrase and thought it was funny, so I worked it in. Whenever I described him, I went into dramatic detail about his black eyes and mysterious pirate nature.

Grazzt Woos Bazuuma: I had an avatar of Grazzt skulking around. Grazzt really wants to marry Bazuuma so I had him try to woo her. It was very interesting. Bidam got jealous. Bidam lives by the philosophy of "hit it and quit it" but it seems like he is changing.

I want to put the pressure on a bit as far as this goes. She is not going to want to marry Grazzt, so that means the betrayal and coup attempt will need to happen soon.

Merging of the Planes

The rest of the session involved the planar breach. The adventurers set themselves up on "Accomplishment Island," where Bazuuma's "Spire of Encouragement" is. Connecting two abyssal realms causes all sorts of chaos as the elements of each plane merge with the other:

• Merging: The River of Salt poured in and formed a new island that will be the home of Grazzt's temple and his city of Zelatar.
• What Does Alkaline Do? It started to rain alkaline. I have no idea what alkaline does so I had the group save vs wetness. Fall From Grace failed her save and was covered in alkaline and suffered alkaline-related conditions.
• Thrusting Winds: Winds kicked up and blew demons people through the air. The group made their saves but some demon unicorns didn't and the group took some horn stabs in the chaos.
• Blue Sun Appears: A blue sun appeared, half-submerged in the ocean. This sun is like the one in Grazzt's realm. It let out solar flares that destroyed buildings on Accomplishment Island. The heroes ended up buried in a collapsed building due to bad die rolls. Fall From Grace dug them out.
• Rain of Blue Fire: It started raining blue fire and now the storm was raging.
• Evil Crustaceans! A tornado kicked up. Burningwater is full of "demon crustaceans." Our heroes had to battle a tornado full of crustaceans - a Crustnado!

Bidam was horrified to see that his baby dragon son, Pyranicus, was sucked in. Bidam dove in to the watery tornado, swam up and saved his kid.

The Crustnado sucked Theran in and he actually went down. Bidam swam down with his kid and pulled Theran out. Theran failed two death saves and barely got healed in time.

He then backed up and busted out a spell I didn't know he had: Disintegrate! He destroyed the Crustnado.

Trump in Danger: The heroes spotted my Donal Trump NPC in the fight of his life against a demon crustacean. This monster was slightly larger than a real life crab, which the group found very amusing. I put this here just to see if the adventurers would help him or not. I was intent on rolling out that fight and seeing what happened.

Bidam decided to help. He sliced the crustacean in half with a single swipe of his sword of sharpness.
Cabiri, the Watching Master
 

The storm began to subside, but the breach had disturbed the realm. A sunken tower of Cabiri suddenly rose up. The group saw the Ebony Queen in the ocean - It had traveled through the planar breach. The spell was a success!

The Ebony Queen changed course and headed for the tower. The demon pirates and Nalen were going to loot that place!

The heroes jumped in their pirate ship piloted by a skeleton. It is fitted with an orrery of the planes, meaning it can pass through stone and other elements.

Inside the tower of Cabiri was a tapestry of demon skin that held some of Cabiri's findings:

• Cabiri wrote about Sibriex flesh crafters - they create demons. Cabiri wondered if the Sibriex were slain, if demons would go extinct.
• Cabiri wrote about the Maeldur - a singular entity that was apparently the source of demonic abilities (immunities, resistances, spell-like powers). Cabiri posited the theory that if the Maeldur was killed, demons would lose all resistances and powers.

The Maeldur is the focus of the third adventure in the Hellbound boxed set, and I want to start setting it up now.

The Ebony Queen pulled up and Nalen came into Cabiris placed with the dark-eyed stranger. Nalen came in and wanted the tapestry. The group objected, so Nalen cast time stop and started rolling up the tapestry. When the spell ended, the group had one round to stop Nalen before he planeshifted away with the tapestry of demon flesh.

Bidam tried to just pull the tapestry away from him with an opposed strength check. Bidam has a high strength, Nalen has a -1. Nalen rolled really high and won!

At the last moment, the group had an idea. They decided to mage hand his hairpiece. Nalen freaked out, embarrassed. He begged the group not to tell anyone about it and pointed out that the hairpiece was an item he had specially crafted.

I did not expect what happened next. The group made friends with him. Nalen gave them the tapestry. The group invited him to come visit them in Deadbook Square.

I fully intended for this guy to be a jerk and be hated, but it just worked out differently.

The Plot Against Grazz't

In the next few sessions, we're going to play out this scheme. Next session I am going to have the players give me their plan. There are a ton of possibilities when it comes to trying to overthrow Grazzt and steal his three realms:

• Lifepearls: The group could get one or more lifepearls from the plane of positive energy and do wacky things with them.
• Truthers: The heroes could recruit those weird creatures in the plane of positive energy who want to commit genocide on all liars. Grazzt and his demons are definitely liars.
• Earth Genies: The heroes might be able to recruit the earth genies in some kind of deal with the earth genie ruler.
• Air Genies: he group might be able to recruit air genies, who surely aren't happy with how Grazzt's right hand man killed so many of their kind at Skyshrine.
• Obyrith: The group is friends with Bechard, a very powerful obyrith. With the planar connection, he can swim to the Bay of Choking Bile and cause great havoc.
• Devils: The group could enlist the devils! They are friends with Drokkarn the pit fiend, who is about to be given his own army for the blood war.

There's two other factors:

Another Planar Breach: Bazuuma might want to create a planar breach, connecting her lair to the plane of positive energy. I imagine this would be quite an "infection" on the abyss which would leak into Azzagrat. Grazzt's land would be poisoned and he'd have to cut ties.

Iggwilv the Witch-Queen: Iggwilv does not want Grazzt marrying Bazuuma. I run Grazzt and Iggwilv as a dysfunctional couple. They want to be together but they are really petty and always playing games. They spend decades scheming against each other.

I think one way for all of this to end is for Grazzt and Iggwilv to get together. This might placate Grazzt enough to let the group and Bazuuma off the hook. I don't think it is possible for the group to steal these three layers, that just seems unlikely. If they have a great idea, then fine. But even if they get them, how can they control them?

There's also Verin, another demon, to deal with. And the thousands of demons already in Azzagrat that aren't exactly going to be thrilled with Bazuuma.

Next session, We'll play through the positive energy realm and then I'm going to lay out their options. The players will need to tell me their plan for Grazzt's realm.

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 28 - Curse of Strahd

November 8, 2016, 9:17 pm

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 11/9/2016

≪ Previous: Planescape - Planar Breach

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• You can watch this episode here.
• I have a Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide here.
• You can buy Curse of Strahd here.
• Check out the Dice, Camera, Action section on reddit.
• Check out the DCA dice roll stats here.

Episode 28: Everything's Fine

It's been two weeks since the last episode. The consensus online is that the last episode is probably the best of the whole show so far, so definitely check it out if you missed it!

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard 
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

Last Time: Diath stabbed a little girl with the hag pin and killed her, the group set fire to the vistani camp and Murderbot the evil puppet seems intent on revenge.

Evelyn had just summoned her undead horse with a lovely magical song. The group had also stolen a horse from the vistani.

They are near Argynvostholt, where the Holy symbol of Ravenkind is supposed to be.

Van Richten says that the ritual to kill Strahd will take 10 minutes and that he will have to swallow an egg. Evelyn asks him if he's ever done that before. 

The group is kind of "waffling" here on whether or not to do the ritual. The ritual kills Strahd! Why wouldn't they just do it right away? I assume that they are sure that there's some kind of catch or twist.

There's a bunch of discussion about what to do. Diath accidentally calls Madame Eva "Mommy Eva," which made me laugh.

It seems like Chris really wants the group to cross the river nearby, but the group isn't into it.

The heroes go to Argynvostholt, which is a ruined mansion with the statue of a dragon outside. The right side of the building has crumbled away.

This will be interesting to see how Chris runs this. When I read it, I couldn't figure out the best way to handle it.

Dragon Statue: Diath sees the dragon statue move and gets weirded out. Strix smartly tries to figure out what type of dragon it is. It's a silver dragon. They normally are good guys.

Evelyn tries to talk to it and make friends. Nothing happens.

The group climbs up to a higher floor, barely getting up there. Van Richten sits down and pulls out the Strahd Puppet. Ritual time!

Egg-Swallowing: One member of the group will have to crack open the egg and dump it down Van Richten's throat.

The ritual is done. Van Richten says the group will need to get Strahd to look at it and utter a phrase which they may or may not remember.

This is Van Richten from 2nd edition

Paultin vs. Van Richten: Paultin wants to kill Van Richten now. They had made a deal that once Strahd was dealt with, Paultin could kill him and get revenge.

Diath urges him to stop. Paultin draws his longsword. Diath tells Paultin that he can't let Barovia turn him into a monster. Paultin decides not to do it and punches him in the face.

It looks like the group wasn't going to let Paultin do it. I'm surprised Evelyn didn't intervene. This group really hates Van Richten.

Entities: The group looks for a room to rest in. A few ghostly creatures bows materialize and attack.
Diath throws a dagger at one through glass.. natural 20! This is especially sweet because Diath rolls so low whenever he chucks his dagger at someone.

Anna keeps rolling high and she becomes very amusing yelling stuff like "Get wrecked" as she proceeds to maul these guys. She is awesome every single week.

The group busts through a door and on they see two red-eyed beings looking at them.

Paultin's Waffle Dome: The group needs a rest bad. Paultin points out that he can cast Leomund's tiny hut aka the "vampire pillow fort." Wait.. they call it "The Waffle House." This spell creates an impenetrable dome that the group can rest in. It even has adjustable mood lighting.

Paultin summons the Waffle Dome and the group is dismayed to see that they are about to run out of rations. Diath eats the last of his food and gets sick. He throws up right there in the confines of the waffle hut. The group thinks this might be a result of the vistani curse from Arabelle.

Evelyn casts Lesser Restoration on Diath by mushing his face with her hand. It doesn't seem to do anything.

The group rests. Diath doesn't gain the benefit of a long rest. He does get a short rest and spends his last hit die. Wow, he is in trouble. He right now has at least three different weird conditions going, at my count.

The Exalted Deeds of the Doodly-Doo: The group resumes exploring. Those red-eyed people are gone. The heroes find a room with the icon of ravenkind in it. There are a ton of ravens in here. Strix holds out her arms for one to perch on. 17 ravens flock to her and she is quite thrilled.

Then someone utters this phrase, referring to the icon of ravenkind: "...before you touch the doodly-doo."

Evelyn picks it up and feels a bond with it. She feels like she's held it once before. She remembers the first time she entered a church of Lathander, she met a young priest wearing it and he let her look at it.

It's the end of the session. Anna hilariously works in the title of this episode to close the show. She goes, "Don't worry guys, everything's fine." They should try to do that every week.

Anna says that Evelyn has a shield and she never roleplays it. Chris allows her to say that she uses her bracers as a shield to block attacks, Wonder Woman-style.

ProJared has proclaimed that next month is D&D-sember. ProJared will be doing a bunch of D&D stuff on his channel which sounds pretty fun.

Overall

Good show! It wasn't like last week, but it has a lot of stuff worth seeing. This one is more about the amusing antics of the group rather than death-defying feats of derring do. I like these kind of episodes so it worked for me.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen it, Wizards of the Coast actually gave a free preview of the Icon of Ravenkind before Curse of Strahd came out. I'm going to stick it right here so you can take a gander at it and see what it can do.

Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 11/9/2016

November 9, 2016, 8:42 pm

≫ Next: Planescape - The Fortress of Life

≪ Previous: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 28 - Curse of Strahd

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I sampled some more podcasts out there. I think all of these were suggested by readers of the last podcast review I did. Thank you!

Total Party Thrill 64: Narrative Control & the Master Illusionist

You can listen to this here.

This show is run by two guys named I-Hsien and Shane. They seem to play a lot of games and from what I can tell they live very close to me. I'm about 45 minutes away from New York City. I wonder if they are caught up in the Trump stuff going on over there.

They both have good radio voices and are quite likeable.

They talk a bit about getting ready for their new Dark Sun campaign, which they are pumped up for. Right now they are playing in a campaign called "Mourning Glory," which is set in Eberron.

Then we get into the main topic of the show - narrative control.

New DM Mistakes: They make an interesting comment about a mistake new DMs make. New DMs often follow every rule every time, to the detriment of the game.

That's an interesting comment, as I think there are a lot of players who would not consider that a mistake. I personally toss rules all the time, but I guess the important thing here is to remember what the goal of the session is, which varies depending on the preferences of each group.

Players Gain Control: Then we go into a topic that I fin unnerving: Giving narrative control to players. They bring up the Critical Role "how do you kill it" thing, where the DM lets the player describe how they kill the monster.

My beef with this is that in my opinion, the DM must always have veto power. 95% of the time it's fine, but sometimes players will start trying to use it in a way that is inappropriate or start traveling down a path that will cause tension. I think that if a player gets used to telling you what the outcome of their actions are, it leads to all sorts of entanglements.

Whenever I let a player do something like that, I try to have it where they give input but don't have final say. Most of the time what they say is great, but I always want to have one hand on the wheel, so to speak.

Retcon: They talk about a pretty nutty idea where the DM gives his players a chip that they can cash in to retcon something. For example, say the player decides to jump over a river of lava, fails their dex save and dies. They can cash in the chip to say that never happened.

That also hives me the heebie jeebies. To me, the entire game hinges on actions and consequences. When there are no consequences, the game loses all of its impact.

That said, maybe it would be a fun experiment to try one session just to see what happens. Who knows, maybe it will lead to hilarity of some sort.

Cheating: They talk about letting players cheat. In 2e, there were a suspiciously large amount of characters with an 18/00 strength. In 2e, if you have an 18 strength, you then roll a percentile die to see exactly how muscly you are. 18/20 is Vin diesel, 18/00 is that bodybuilder guy with the veins exploding out of his neck.

They talk about letting players hide their death saves, essentially allowing a player to decide if he or she dies or not. You're essentially taking consequences completely out of the game. Although then again, you don't really have a campaign if the heroes die all the time. Death in RPGs is quite tricky and I really am not sure the best way to approach it.

This was a very good show. It is definitely worth checking out.

Adventure Zone Episode 51: The Suffering Game

You can listen to this right here.

This is an ongoing campaign. The heroes are:

• Merle
• Taako
• Magnus

I'm not sure what the races and classes are.

We start off with music, sound effects and voices. The intro music is very 70's-weird and I like it.

The Hook: The group has been training and now they are ready to go on their next mission. They have a boss known as The Director and they're not sure if she's trustworthy.

Apparently they are collecting relics. Their next relic in a place called "Wonderland," a place where your wishes come true. Apparently, other adventurers are there.

Side Quest: One player takes the DM by surprise. He wants to break into a prison to ask an NPC about these red-robed wizards. The character runs into 2 guards and the DM doesn't want to roll out the battle, he wants to do an opposed strength check. Yikes. One roll. I get that he wants to keep thing moving but a fight with one PC vs 2 NPCs won't take long, and the outcome is important. The character makes his roll. He stuffs the guards in some kind of bag of holding.

He doesn't really get any info from the imprisoned NPC. The DM was really not ready for that, poor guy.

There's a commercial break halfway through. This show is quite professional, I must say.

Cannonball to the Realms: Apparently the adventurers travel in a giant cannonball/sphere. They soar over the realm which is.. the Forgotten Realms. Cool, I like it when people use official stuff.
They land and are attacked by a chimera.

They pummel the chimera and get some aid by... the ruler of Neverwinter. That's where we stop!

This was pretty good. That player who went solo seems like he might get annoying after a while.

The Id DM

You can listen to this here.

The Id DM is apparently a psychologist in real life. I absolutely love the idea of him doing pseudo-D&D therapy sessions in podcast form.

On this episode, he basically winds Mike up and lets him go, which I think is a good way to do an interview. He gives Mike the spotlight and lets him go wild. Mike seems like a guy who could talk for 4 hours straight on D&D with no problem.

Truth: Mike mentions a hard-learned fact of DM Life: The players will not read your flash fiction or summaries.

Then he goes into a thing where he points out that talking about D&D with your friend is playing D&D.

Mike has some great advice on running villains. Think about the villain's mindset and what their plans are based on what they know.

DMs Are Online: They talk a bit about how there are a lot of blogs about DMing and not a lot about player-focused advice blogs. They agree that DMs are more hardcore, so they'll go online and read. Many players just show up and play and that's it.

Mike talks about creating and selling D&D material and how there are gatekeepers trying to keep certain products being made? I don't really understand what he is referring to. He says that there are people who want to write adventures, but they feel like they need to please someone else.

Really good show! Top notch. It's kind of scary that this is episode 1.

Sneak Attack Episode 73

You can listen to this here.

This is another actual play show. The DM is a guy named Reed. Here's the group:

• McCannell
• Brenna
• Sherwood (he is a horse right now, I think)
• Grayek

I am a little hesitant to listen to podcasts of games because it's a big investment, especially if the shows are 5 hours long. This one is only an hour long, so what the hell.

Chortling: The group is very fun and they have a really amusing dynamic. It's like when you know your friends are about to say something funny.. it's like that the whole way through.

The Hot Orc: We learn that previously, a character had been tricked out of two suits of plate mail. It isn't long before they belly crawl towards a statue in a clearing. They get in a battle with an 8 foot tall "hot orc who is ripped." He's got gold armor on his arms and thighs.

This fight took quite a while. It was cool, I just think that for a one hour show they shouldn't let one battle eat up the clock too much.

Brenna decides to dole out a roundhouse kick to the orc. DM gives her disadvantage on that. I wish he wouldn't have done that. Maybe it makes sense, but I would never want to discourage a player from handing out a roundhouse kick.

Portal: Once the orc is dealt with, they enter into the area inside the statue. They find a magic gem with a portal in it.. this is the portal home. I guess they've been looking for a long time.

Fun show! Very quick and easy to listen to. Everyone has a good voice and a distinct character.

Thanks to everyone who suggested these shows. Please feel free to suggest more shows for me to check out in the comment section below.

Planescape - The Fortress of Life

November 14, 2016, 3:11 am

≫ Next: Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Graz'zt, The Dark Prince

≪ Previous: Dungeons & Dragons Podcast Reviews 11/9/2016

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We played some more Planescape and we are rolling really nicely.

The story right now is about how the group is friends with a "good" demon lord, Bazuuma. She has agreed to marry Graz'zt and merge her one realm with his 3 realms.

She secretly married one of the characters and is planning on trying to betray Graz'zt and take all of his realms for herself.

To prepare, I made a Guide to Graz'zt which is done but not yet posted. I might put it up later today. Doing the guide allowed me to dig up tons of useful info which has helped me create an outline for this little storyline we have going. Here's what I got for the next 3 sessions:

1. The heroes go to the plane of positive energy and get lifepearls ("creation seeds" that can form new races and planes).
2. The adventurers use the lifepearls to corrupt Graz'zt's three realms and things go wrong.
3. Graz'zt's sidekick tries to wrest control of Bazuuma's realm from her.

Here's some of the NPCs to keep straight:

• Verin: White-skinned advisor to Graz'zt.
• Ztefano: A mysterious ally of Graz'zt who the group briefly met last session.
• Bazuuma: Demon lord of positive energy, one of my "good" demon lords.
• Bechard: A demon whale and an obyrith who is friends with the group and Bazuuma.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard
* NPCs: Fall-from-Grace (level 11 Succubus Paladin)

The Chaos Ship

Graz'zt's realm and Bazuuma's were now connected thanks to the planar breach spell.

Graz'zt's demons flew in on the chaos ship (which I plan on using in some way in the upcoming blood war). On the ship was:

• Verin: Graz'zt's demon lord sidekick who I am situating as the villain of this little trilogy of sessions.
• Rule-of-Three: A prominent planescape NPC/son of Graz'zt. I'd read about an item he has that I really want the group to get a look at.
• A bunch of mariliths and vrocks.

Verin inspected the planar connection and dumped a bunch of info on the group:

• The connection isn't complete until the city of Zelatar is connected. 
• Zelatar is made of souls, and the mysterious Ztefano will be handling that.
• Verin warned the group to avoid Ztefano as he is quite dangerous.
• Graz'zt will be having some of his lieutenants coming in and running the city. This has created vacancies....

Surprise Election Victory

Verin says that there's a place in Graz'zt's realms called Vulderpayne that needs a Baron. Verin looked around at Bazuuma's followers and elected Gonard Flumph to be the new ruler.

Gonard is my Donald Trump NPC. I have used him as a satirical goofy character - an excuse for me to translate whatever Trump is doing into a D&D context.

Seeing how Trump was shockingly elected this week, I decided that Flumph should be suddenly given rulership of a realm, too.

I almost considered phasing Flumph out completely because the whole country is in an uproar. I decided to try it and the group died laughing, so it worked out fine.

The Abyss is Sentient

After that was done, I had the ancient demon whale Bechard talk to the characters. They got in his mouth, and inside him is a demonic version of the inside of the whale in Pinnochio. Bechard innards contains wrecked ships, howling winds, huge rib bones and animated gnoll skeletons.

Bechard loves the heroes because they freed him from eternal torment in Yeenoghu's Realm. He gave them some info I learned from Faces of Evil: The Fiends, an utterly fantastic supplement on demons:

• Abyssal layer are dimly sentient.
• When you try to take over an abyssal layer, you must have a strong force of will or the layer will literally swallow you up.
• Certain layers are feared because they swallow up everyone who tries to take them over.
• Layers must feed on demon princes/princesses or else they shrink and eventually merge with another layer.

These ideas are going to play a big part in the session after the next one.

Return to Sigil

Coaxmetal is from Planescape: Torment

Then the group met with Bazuuma. She asked them to go explore the positive energy plane. They agreed to do so.

The heroes went back to Sigil. Bidam finally went to get the Orcusword and gave it to a giant golem named Coaxmetal to repair.

Seoni begged Theran for help - the Codex of Infinite Planes was slowly devouring her soul. He didn't know how to help her.

I decided to squeak in stuff I made a month or two ago. The heroes own mansions in the Elemental Plane of Earth and I had found a fun side adventure in Tales of the Outer Planes that I thought would be amusing. It was!

The Slayer Genie

Bidam's Slayer Genie

The heroes learned that their dwarf miners had uncovered something. They went through the portal to the plane of earth. They checked out their mansions being built by the builder genie. One mansion had a magic jacuzzi, which was pretty sweet.

Theran has an earth genie "wife" who is very intense. Bidam has a goliath "wife" who is very laid back.

The builder genie is a servant of Theran. Bidam has a slayer genie. Those things are badass.

The slayer genie knelt down before Bidam and asked whom it should slay. Slayer genies have an innate need to kill.

So, the group thought for a minute, looked at me smiling and I said, "...Oh no." They laughed. They hate Gonard Flumph. They want him dead.

But that's not all. They hate Ash Vodiran, the greatest thief in all of Sigil who stole from them twice. He robbed them of the wand of orcus! And 18,000 gold!

The slayer genie has his targets. I have no idea the best way to handle this. I guess I'll go with the most interesting outcome. I don't want to use this to somehow screw the group over, but it also feels kind of lame to have two prominent enemies killed "off screen" by an NPC assassin.

I'm going to have to think about it and read around to see what other people have done in this kind of situation.

Profit: The heroes have 100 dwarves mining for gems. I had made of gems found and the group was quite thrilled as they each pocketed about 1,000 gp worth.

The Garden of Floating Crystals

Earth Genie

The dwarves had unearthed an ancient chamber while mining. The group went in to explore what turned out to be a mini-dungeon.

The Faces: The first room had two giant faces on a wall. In one of their mouths was the passage to the next room. In the other was a death trap. The stone faces told them this, laughed, and made fun of the heroes.

One stone face had only one eye. Bidam poked it in the eye and opened its mouth for a moment. Theran has epic eyesight thanks to his robe of eyes but saw darkness and just a spot of light.

They did something similar to the other face and saw a death trap in there.

They went through the one-eyed face's mouth and made their way to the next room.

Cousin of Grumbar: This one is weird. It's a circular room half a mile long. There's a lot of sand and a huge fist sticking out of it. On the fist is a giant ring. You need the ring to exit the room and continue on.

The hand came to life and tried to flick Bidam but he dodged. Bidam eventually pulled off the ring and the group ran as the creature that was buried in the sand began rising up out of it.

The Garden: The group came to the final room, where there was all of these floating crystals. Trapped in four of them were different creatures. This room also had a magic trap where arrows charged with kinetic energy were up by the ceiling, ready to launch at whoever freed someone from a gem.

The story here is that this place was the lair of a villainous earth genie who is long dead. I had his face appear magically to interact with the group, mostly so I could do a mustache-twirling villain schtick. His name: Axalachite, the gleaming sultan of stones best left unturned.

The heroes were amused by the bad guy and intent on freeing the people in the gems without triggering the trap. After a lot of thinking, they ad their buddy Fall From Grace fly up and mess with the arrows so that their kinetic energy was discharged.

They freed a few creatures who'd been trapped for centuries:

Lymph Dilutius: A water genie who had been tricked by the evil Axalachite. The genie promised the group a wish - a twisted genie wish, of course. The group will be using the wish very soon. Lymph plane-shifted home and will respond to the group should they use a sending spell.

Kristal: Her rescue is the point of the original scenario. She is the daughter of a duke, has an 18 charisma, long blonde hair and she is "small and frail."

The Lifepearls

The group went back to Sigil. Bidam lives by the code of "hit it and quit it." He didn't try to put the moves on Kristal.

Fall From Grace pointed out something to him that I noticed last session - Bidam is changing. Since he married Bazuuma, he might actually want to be monogamous.

Bidam denied this. It was funny, this is not something Jessie is roleplaying, it is just sort of happening. So her reaction was very real - she was shocked and put up resistance to the idea but I could see that there was some truth to it.

The next day, the group sought out Lissandra the Gate-Seeker and learned that there was a portal to the plane of positive energy in The Great Gymnasium, home of the Transcendent Order faction. The Order believes in the mind-body connection. They exercise a lot. It's cooler than it sounds.

The group did no research at all. This plane is dangerous. They just jumped right in. A bunch of stuff happened right away:

• They were floating in a realm of light.
• They couldn't see far at all, just distant black blurs.
• Their eyes hurt from the light. If you look at the robe of eyes stats, you know that light is really bad for Theran.
• They immediately started getting pumped full of positive energy, gaining 2d10 hit points per round.

They were "overhealing," piling on temporary hit points. The group got nervous and decided to start flying toward a black blot. This is really bad, because they left the portal behind and had no way to find it again.

Explode: I got alarmed because there was a very good chance both of the characters were about to die. The deal here is that once you "overheal" to the point you double your max hit points, you explode in a burst of radiant motes. You die, and you die as if you were disintegrated. There is nothing left of you!

I decided that if they died, we'd stop the session there and I'd see what options there were during the week.

Then they got really wacky. On their own, they realized they were going to blow up. They proceeded to fly towards the blot and attack each other each round to keep their temporary hit points off. Bidam has a sword of sharpness! If he rolls a 20, he has a chance of cutting off one of Theran's limbs!

I was beyond amused. Spell damage is maximized here. Theran dropped a freaking fireball on Bidam and did piles and piles of damage. Bidam tore into Theran, carving away with the sword of sharpness.

Thankfully, they decided to use their cubic gate to get out of there and regroup.

They got back to Sigil and did some research. Fall From Grace got a spell called Positive Energy Protection, which would make traveling in the plane safe.

The group went back and found their way to the Fortress of Life - the stronghold of the Transcendant Order in the plane of positive energy.

After a bunch of talking, the group learned that the Order was in the plane searching for lifepearls. They had 10 already! Lifepearls are balls of energy that you can use to make races or planes, according to one sourcebook. They have charges. You can spend a charge to heal diseases or raise dead.

The lifepearls are "concentrated creation." The Order was willing to hand over some pearls in exchange for control of one of the Abyssal layers.

Corrupting Azzagrat

Ultimately, the group cooked up a plan. They are going to use three lifepearls and place them in the core of each of Graz'zt's three realms. The hope is that the pearl's positive energy will "corrupt" the planes toward good and send the demons running.

I asked them how they planned to do that next session - at the same time, or one at a time.

They decided to use the water genie Lymph Dilutius. They're going to use their wish to have all three pearls implanted at the same time.

They know that the genie is going to try to twist their wish, so this one will be very tricky.

I have a good idea of how next session will go and it's going to be utter chaos. These planes are sentient and they are not going to like these mortals trying to "poison them" with positivity.

No idea what's going to happen! I guess we'll see soon enough.

Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to Graz'zt, The Dark Prince

November 14, 2016, 3:34 pm

≫ Next: Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 29 - Curse of Strahd

≪ Previous: Planescape - The Fortress of Life

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In this guide I am going to try to collect all the official lore on Graz'zt so that you can use it as a springboard for ideas on how to use him in your campaign. Graz'zt is one of the most powerful demon lords and has been featured in a number of D&D products in various editions.
This guide completes a "set" of linked concepts. Here are the other ones:

• Guide to Azzagrat: The three layers that Graz'zt rules
• Guide to Iggwilv: The witch queen is heavily intertwined with Graz'zt
• Guide to the Demonomicon of Iggwilv: A tome that Graz'zt had a hand in creating.

If you just want to use one source for Graz'zt information, I'd suggest getting Dragon Magazine #360. It is massive and full of cool stuff.

For 5e stats, you'll want to get Out of the Abyss. Graz'zt is barely in the adventure, but he is fully statted out in the back of the book. Other useful sources:

• The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
• For Duty or Deity
• Fiendish Codex I
• 4e Manual of the Planes

The Essential Information

• He has a love/hate relationship with Iggwilv.
• He might have been a devil who served Asmodeus the Archdevil.
• He might be the offspring of Pale Night, an ancient demonic entity.
• He wants to become the Prince of Demons.
• He wields Wave of Sorrow, a rippling blade that drips acid.
• He rules three layers of the Abyss, the Triple Layer of Azzagrat.
• He has a sidekick named Verin who is also a demon lord.
• He has a number of siblings who are also demon lords.

Minions and Allies:

• Verin/Ztefano: Pale skin, chief diplomat.
• Unhath and Reluhantis: His personal marilith guards.
• Rhyxali: His demon lord sister
• Zuggtmoy: Demon lord of Fungi, they have a weird, secret relationship.
• Pale Night: She might be Graz'zt's mother.
• Ebulon: He once served Graz'zt as a general/ Is trapped in the Wells of Darkness.
• Orwantz: A goristro in charge of Azzagrat border control.
• Dark Myrakul: A lich-thing that guards an asylum in Carceri.
• Arzial: The ruler of the barony of Vulderpayne in Azzagrat.
• Saretta: She runs the Counting House in Azzagrat.
• Lavendeth: A lillitu high priestess in the Grand Shrine of Zelatar.
• Jenmissa, Katriksy and Ulanda: Succubus guards.
• Anastasia: Human cultist who rules a town
• Iha-Denarthun: A lamia cult leader who commands about 60 more lamias
• Audry Lilybrook: A human cultist of Saltmarsh who runs an orphanage!
• Tyralandi: A half-fiend thrall of Graz'zt who runs the Porphyry House in the Savage Tide adventure path.

Enemies:

• Lupercio & Vucarik: His demon lord brothers.
• Raxivort, lord of the xvarts: Hiding from Graz'zt in Azzagrat.
• Malcanthet: Demon Lord of Succubi, who rejected him
• Orcus: Demon Lord of Undead
• Demogorgon: Prince of Demons
• Baphomet: Demon Lord of Minotaurs
• Yeenoghu: Demon Lord of Gnolls
• Lolth: Demon Queen of Spiders, she refused to team up with Graz'zt.
• Adimarchus: Fallen Angel/Demon Lord of Madness, imprisoned in Carceri.
• Zivorgian, the Lady of Ripe Carrion: His demon lord sister.

Children of Graz'zt:

• Athux: His mother is the drow Eclavdra, he leads Graz'zt's army.
• Thraxxia: His daughter, an assassin.
• Arzial the Blooded Baron: Half-fiend wizard who lacks ambition. He is supposed to take control of Vulderpayne, a barony on the Plain of Infinite Portals.
• Belyara: A lamia who was imprisoned by an eladrin. She wants revenge on Graz'zt for not trying to save her.
• Rule-of-Three: A major Planescape NPC trying to unite the fiends.
• Iuz: An evil god from Greyhawk. 
• Liska: Daughter of Graz'zt a skulk assassin who has drow underlings.

Contradictory Origin: In 3e, it was said that Graz'zt's mother was Pale Night and that Graz'zt was a devil. In 4e, it says he was actually a devil who went to the Abyss and assimilated. I think the best solution to this is to say that his mother is Pale Night and his father is Asmodeus.

AD&D 1st Edition

The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

This adventure deals with the witch queen Iggwilv. She had bound Graz'zt and accidentally freed him. They had an epic battle and he escaped into the Abyss.

He has a -9 AC! In 1e, low is good. Plate mail is AC 2. -9 is about as epic as it gets. Here is what we learn:

• He is a dedicated for of Demogorgon and Orcus.
• He was in a battle against harpies, troglodytes and bar-lgura when he was summoned by Iggwilv. He escaped eventually and was confined to his own plane for a century.
• He has black skin, green glowing eyes and six fingers on each hand.
• He is served by lamias.
• In his lair are succubi and/or balors.
• When he rolls a 20, inanimate objects (like armor) are often destroyed via acid.
• He's got a big of spell abilities including teleport, disintegrate and trap the soul.
• He can summon 1-2 balors "without fail."

How do you get in a fight with harpies, troglodytes and bar-lgura at the same time? Where did this take place? Was he drunk?

Monster Manual II

Graz'zt appears in the MM2 with pretty much the same info. There's a new picture of him by Jim Holloway.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Iuz the Evil

This is a Greyhawk supplement about an evil demigod named Iuz. Iuz is the son of Iggwilv and Graz'zt. It says here the Graz'zt is the "...ruler of several abyssal planes." Iuz was originally a cambion.

At some point, Iggwilv offended Graz'zt and he imprisoned her in the Abyss. Iuz hates Graz'zt for imprisoning her, but he is careful not to anger him.

Eclavdra, a pretty major drow NPC, is a representative of Graz'zt. Lolth and Graz'zt have some kind of nebulous arrangement.

A balor who serves Graz'zt is in a farming village called Stahzer. He has an army that battles an army led by a marilith who serves "Pazrael" (Pazuzu).

They even have his 2e stats in here. They're very similar to his 1e stats. Factoids:

• He rules three Abyssal planes.
• He is unusually self-controlled for a demon.
• H uses Iuz as a source of souls and magic items.
• He likes to defeat mortal foes through subtlety and twisting words rather than brute force.

Planes of Chaos

This Planescape boxed set fleshes him out a bit

• He is also known as the Lord of Shadows and the Lord of the Triple Realm.
• He enjoys contrasts that others find disgusting, such as a flower in a room of skulls or a corpse on a gilded throne.
• Entire rooms of his palace are devoted to single colors or single themes like blood, storms, or darkness.
• He likes to wear white and wield silver.
• He is constantly surrounded by guards - 13 babau.
• He can transform any weapon he wields into an acid-dripping terror.
• He likes to use these magic items: Sword of sharpness, wand of frost, chime of opening, robe of eyes, and a cloak of displacement.
• He spends his wealth on the Blood War.
• He has many children who are demigods.
• His ultimate goal is to drag an entire crystal sphere of the Prime (that's a universe, like all the worlds in the Forgotten Realms settings) into the Abyss to create a fourth abyssal layer.

Faces of Evil: the Fiends

This book has all sorts of details on demons, devils and other creatures.

Graz'zt has taken over three adjacent layers (45th through 47th.). The fictional narrator says this: "I don't think he'll claim too many more. That kind of domination would surely cause the lesser tanar'ri to rise up and cast out the one who would crush their freedoms; the fiends are capable of concerted action, after all."

We learn about Graz'zt's brother, Lupercio:

• He's a a demon lord, the "Baron of Sloth." 
• He rules Slugbed, the 128th layer of the Abyss.
• He has little lairs one other Abyssal layers that are cramped hovels, graceful castles and dung-filled riverbeds.
• He is ebony-colored and has no distinct form. 
• His sharpened teeth glitter in the blackness.
• He has a "basso-tittering cackle" and incredible strength.
• He might be the embodiment of the strength of darkness
• He goes through periods of sloth and short bouts of manic activity.

Pale Night

We also get details on Pale Night:

• She is one of the oldest Abyssal lords.
• She is the mother of Graz'zt, Lupercio and Vucarik of Chains.
• She lives in a bone castle in the Endless Maze of Baphomet.
• She looks like a female wrapped in a single shroud. There is no physical form inside.
• She hardly ever speaks and nobody knows much about her.

We even get info on Verin:

• He serves Graz'zt and may be an Abyssal lord.
• He finds out the weaknesses of other abyssal lords.
• He knows secrets and uses them to turn abyssal lords against each other.
• Verin is pale, and he can shift to a dark form named Ztefano.
• Ztefano can travel undetected.

For Duty and Deity

This is a really unique adventure. It combines Planescape stuff (the Infinite Staircase) and the Forgotten Realms.

The overall story is that Graz'zt has given asylum to a Forgotten Realms goddess named Waukeen, who had lost much of her power. She had wanted to pass through his realm to get to The Outlands.

She agreed to tell Graz'zt which Abyssal lords were blackmailing other lords, which were paying lords to fight or avoid the Blood Wat

She is his "guest" until they "renegotiate" their deal. She's his prisoner. This adventure introduces a lot of new ideas:

• His plan is to steal Greyspace (the universe of the Greyhawk setting) but that scheme has "...centuries or millenia yet..." to come to fruition.
• Graz'zt wants to place the psyche of Thraxxia, one of his children, in Waukeen's body.
• Thraxxia is an alu-fiend and a personal assassin for her father.
• Thraxxia can fire off multiple rainbow beams?! All within 60 feet of her take damage and must make a save or "be stricken dumb and wander in a trance for 1d10 rounds."
• Rumor has it that Graz'zt swindled the devas of Mount Celestia into mining stone for his evil palace.
• His towers are made from ivory stolen from huge, whalelike creatures from the astral plane.
• Graz'zt created his city Zelatar entirely from the souls of mortals gained from his dealings on the prime.

D&D 3rd Edition

Book of Vile Darkness

This book is more "adult" than regular d&d books. That was sort of the gimmick with this and it is pretty funny. We learn some new stuff:

• Graz'zt does "sexual favors" for witches and sorcerers.
• He always travels with a retinue of female monsters - lamias, succubi or marilith.
• At some point, he was summoned to the material plane by Zagyg. Huh.. that's weird. Iggwilv was an apprentice to Zagyg.
• He wants to overthrow Demogorgon and become the Prince of Demons.

We get details on The Chosen, the cult of Graz'zt:

• They are female priests of Graz'zt.
• They make blood sacrifices in his name.
• There are "sexual rites."
• Here's a neat little quote for you: "His temples are dark, secluded places where orgies are common."

Example Cults: Anastasia runs a cult in the cellar of a tower. Isha-Denarthun has a large temple in the desert flanked by huge statues of Graz'zt. There's over 60 lamias there. They kill victims in an acid vat.

Servants of Graz'zt: We learn about some of Graz'zt's minions:

• Unhath & Reluhantis: When Graz'zt leaves the palace, these two mariliths rule it with an iron hand.
• Yattara: She is in charge of a squad of succubi who are spies and infiltrators.

Dungeon 98-116 The Shackled City Adventure Path

Shackled City was the first big paizo adventure path. I actually ran this in 4e and it's not perfect, but there's a lot of awesome stuff in it. Here's the Graz'zt related content:

• A portion of Celestia ended up in the Abyss and became Occipitus, the 507th layer.
• It was ruled by a demon warlord/fallen angel named Adimarchus.
• Adimarchus did battle with Graz'zt and ended up imprisoned on the plane of Carceri.
• Because the realm is from Celestia, demons avoid this place.
• In "Test of the Smoking Eye," The 5th adventure in the path, the group goes to Occipitus and one of the heroes can become the new ruler. They gain new powers and a smoking eye.

Graz'zt has servants:

Dark Myrakul: He's a lichfiend who guards the cell Adimarchus is in. He was a half-demodand who underwent a painful and torturous process to become a lich with the aid of Graz'zt. If he dies, his lifeforce returns to Graz'zt's side.

Soulcage: Graz'zt made the prison Adimarchus is in. It is called a soulcage. It does a lot of things:

•  It prevents you from using spells or abilities. 
• It drops your strength to 3.
• While in the cage, the prisoner is immune to all damage and magic effects.
• The cage is impervious to magic.
• Each soulcage has an "escape clause." 

Athux: He is Graz'zt's son and he is linked to Adimarchus. This is one of the most prominent gay relationships in D&D. Athux was disguised as a paladin who went on a quest to redeem the soul of Adimarchus. They fought, but then sparks flew. Athux was his prisoner. They actually became allies.

Graz'zt abducted Athux and imprisoned him in Carceri. Adimarchus tried to go there and made a deal to trade places. It was then that Athux revealed that he was a double agent the whole time. This drove Adimarchus completely insane.

Dungeon 95 + 146 Porphyry House

Porphyry house is a brothel that appeared in two James Jacobs adventures. They both feature Tyralandi, who lives in an evil pirate city called Scuttlecove.

• Her human mother died in childbirth when Tyralandi clawed out of her womb.
• She fended for herself and eventually became a thrall of Graz'zt.
• Her specialty is assassinating followers of Demogorgon.
• She is a "gothic haunting beauty" with raven wings, red horns and talons.
• She is a "sado masochist" and when the group meets her, she has lost up to 30% of her hit points from self-inflicted wounds. Hey, that's what it said.
• Tyralandi will probably betray the party once the adventure is over.
• She uses the bordello as her eyes and ears.
• She plots to turn Scuttlecove into a personal paradise.

Fiendish Codex I

This book reprints old stuff and adds in a few new factoids:

• Graz'zt is the patron of corrupt rulers and decadence.
• He grants audiences to those who can provide him with aid or intelligence concerning this war.
• Graz'zt was unable to take over Occipitus, the realm that once belonged to Adimarchus.
• He is in a cold war with Malcanthet.
• Iggwilv was able to summon Graz'zt by stealing lore from Zagyg. The two became lovers and had kids.

Expedition to the Demonweb Pits

Weirdly enough, Graz'zt plays a big role in this mega-adventure.

• Graz'zt wants to team up with Lolth to fight Orcus but she refuses.
• As revenge, Graz'zt starts stirring up trouble among the drow.
• He wants to unite the demon lords in a Demon Council which he will run.
• Graz'zt uses the heroes to cause problems so that the demon lords will think the council is necessary.
• At the end, the group ends up busting in on the council meeting for an insane encounter with demon lords and their proxies.
• Graz'zt is magically disguised as Malcanthet.

The group will likely fight an aspect of Graz'zt in there. He has three succubi who try to protect him: Jenmissa, Katriksy and Ulanda.

Dungeon 121 Fiend's Embrace

This adventure is about a cloak that Graz'zt made for Iggwilv. It is called Fiend's Embrace, and it was made from the skin of a pit fiend.

Iggwilv gave it to one of her mortal lovers just to screw with Graz'zt's head. Since that time, the cloak has changed hands many times. In this adventure, it's in a dungeon.

Dragon Magazine 359

Graz'zt is listed as the 12th greatest villain in D&D history. There is a special background...

Spawn of the Dark Prince: You have the power to get a huge bonus to certain charisma-based checks. Because you are self-absorbed, you are less aware of your surroundings and take a -2 penalty to perception.

Dragon Magazine 360 - Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Graz'zt

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest dragon magazine articles of all time. We learn about Graz'zt's parents:

• It is noted that Pale Night has an "alien mind"
• Pale Night is an obyrith.
• Pale Night "beckoned something to her realm to impregnate her, so she could sire her own brood of children to vie for the crown."
• The entity is rumored to be Asmodeus, Loki, Set or a baernaloth. Some think it was the Abyss itself. 
• She gave birth to countless monsters. A few survived to become demon lords.

We get some more details on Graz'zt's siblings:

• Vucarik is humanoid in shape but he is completely covered in chains.
• Zivorgian, the Lady of Ripe Carrion (!) is a bloated three-headed abomination, not quite vulture and not quite angel.
• Rhyxali has no body at all.

Verin: We learn that he has pale skin, no body hair, and his flesh oozes "spiritual slime." Ztefano is a mirror of Verin who specializes in fueling wars and promoting schisms.

Ebulon: He is a demo lord general who failed Graz'zt. Ebulon was defeated by Demogorgon and imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness. Graz'zt sends armies and champions to try to free him but has had no success.

Factoids:

• Graz'zt wants to absorb a world and trap it in the Nerebdian Vast the 48th layer of the Abyss - a desert)
• Graz'zt wants to unite demons, devils and yugoloths together to go to the Upper Planes and destroy them.

Thrall of Graz'zt

Cults of Graz'zt: Cultists do some weird things:

• Once a year, they befriend and corrupt a lawful good cleric or paladin.
• The Hollow Feast: A naked cultist is chained to a frame and left to starve for a few days. The cultist offers prayers and, ideally, Graz'zt ends a minion to bless the cultist. The minion drinks acid and kisses the cultist, which obviously does damage.

Minions: Demons that serve Graz'zt include: Lamias, sucubi, harpies, lillitus, tieflings, cambions, half-fiends, rutterkins, carnevus demons, hezrous, vrocks, chasmes, and bulezaus.

Caligrosto

The Razor Legion: Cambion rangers that serve Graz'zt. They ally with caligrostos. These creatures are one of the newer fiend types known as loumara. Loumaras are demon spirits who possess things.

• They can possess unattended blades.
• As long as it wields a weapon, it creates a phantom image of the last creature it damaged.
• Caligrostos are invisible when not wielding a blade.

D&D 4th Edition

Manual of the Planes

GRaz'zt has a giant entry in this book. New stuff:

• He was once a devil, an advisor to Asmodeus.
• His job was to invade the abyss and seize the seed of evil that created it.
• During that invasion, Graz'zt took over three Abyssal layers.
• It is possible that he is secretly colluding with Asmodus and the devils!
• Aspect: Graz'zt has no connection to his aspects except that he knows if one has been summoned.

Wave of Sorrow: This is his massive, black greatsword that drips acid and can teleport those that it hits. The blade ripples and moves like a wave when he wields it.

Chosen of Graz'zt: They are mostly lamias. In 4e, lamias were different. They were people that could turn into a swarm. They have a bunch of powers:

• They can speak the Word of Graz'zt and dominate enemies within 25 feet.
• They can change shape.
• Because they are technically a swarm, they can squeeze through the tiniest openings.
• Their job is to spy and assassinate.

Six-Fingered Slayers: Usually some of the members are Six-fingered slayers, human assassins with six fingers on each hand. They have a power called Dark Veil, which lets them become harder to detect and they are insubstantial.

Dark Acolytes: Dark Acolytes make up most of the cult.

• They're immune to being charmed
• They are minions (1 hit point mooks)
• When they die, they let out dying whispers that give their allies bonuses to hit whoever slew them.

Graz'zt sends certain type of demons to help his cults: Immoliths, Nabassu and hezrou.

Demonomicon

Faithful of Graz'zt: They can dominate foes, redirect attacks against them, and they can create an illusory duplicate while turning invisible. It's a way for them to escape.

Evanissu/City Corruptor: This is a new type of demon. They go to a mortal city, corrupt it and eventually the city slides into the abyss. They go to places in moral decay.

Ferrolith: These were succubi who went with Graz'zt when he first traveled to the Abyss:

• They tried to betray Graz'zt, but he cast them into a pool of molten iron.
• The metal merged with their flesh and they became the ferroliths.
• Since that time, more ferroliths have crawled from pools of molten abyssal iron.
• Their hair is made of razor sharp wire.
• The Iron Maiden: She is a ferrolith who seized a fortress on the Plain of 1,000 Portals. She is trying to form an alliance with Asmodeus against Graz'zt.
• They hate Graz'zt but are bound to serve him.

Incubus: Male succubi, "handsome vagabonds." They are Graz'zt's main scouts in mortal worlds. When Graz'zt first invaded the abyss, some of his Succubi turned into incubi and gained the ability to transform into any medium or large beasts.

Book of Vile Darkness

Graz'zt Storyline: There is a campaign outline in here that involves a cult of Graz'zt committing murders and trying to clear the land of the influence of Asmodeus. Graz'zt is mustering his army in the Abyss. Graz'zt and lesser demon lords kill the Dark Eight, the pit fiend generals who control the blood war devil armies.

Graz'zt Quote: “I live for the moment when I can to turn something pure into something perverse.”

Dungeon Magazine 212 - Court of the Dark Prince

In this high level adventure, the heroes break into Graz'zt's palace to try to free an angel trapped in the Whispering Library.

Graz'zt's throne room has a choir of succubi who are partially encased in amber, suffering.

What Happens if Graz'zt is Slain: If the group kills Graz'zt, potent rituals bound in the walls preserve his essence. The towers of the Argent Palace collapse! Hi body will reform, it is up to the DM how long that takes.

It says this: "These rituals leave him greatly diminished in power, even as they place Rauwend and Voorz'zt out of his control. Demons previously held in check by the Dark Prince embark on a riot of ruin, looting, and settling scores with rivals."

So it looks like Graz'zt loses control of two out of his three layers.

Dragon Magazine 414 - The Iggwilv/Grazzt Affair

They Keep Capturing Each Other: While imprisoned by Iggwilv, the information Graz'zt gave her was put into the first Demonomicon of Iggwilv When Graz'zt escaped, he eventually imprisoned her in his realm. They had a lot of "monstrous offspring."

Jealousy: Graz'zt jealously set out to destroy any fiend that had trafficked with Iggwilv in the past. Graz'zt would have Iggwilv seduce his enemies to learn their secrets

D&D 5th Edition

Monster Manual

We get a couple of paragraphs on Graz'zt on page 52. Nothing really new. He likes: "...sating his decadent desires with subjects and consorts alike, among whom incubi and succubi are often his favorites."

Out of the Abyss

Graz'zt has an entry in this adventure but he doesn't really appear in it. He apparently lurks in the drow city of Menzoberranzan.

• He considers restriction the only sin.
• His cultists wear alabaster masks with ecstatic expressions.
• He wields Angdrelve, the Wave of Sorrow.

The area near his lairs have effects:

• Flat surfaces become highly reflective.
• Wild beasts break into "frequent conflicts and wild coupling." You might get madness of Graz'zt.

Madness of Graz'zt: All of the demon lords in this book have an aura that will give you a specific madness/insanity trait. Some of Graz'zt's madnesses are:

• "There is nothing in this world more important then me."
• "I will not rest until I have made someone else mine."
• "Anything that can bring me happiness should be enjoyed immediately."

He's a pretty tough guy. He's got an AC of 20 and 378 hit points.

Links

• DMs Guild Grazzt Adventure linked to Out of the Abyss
• 50 Shades of Grazzt T-Shirt
• Great article on the D&D site that gives a rundown of his appearances
• The Big Grazzt Mini
• Grazzt Comic