Bad Idea Shitpost: D&D Pharmacology

All these bad idea shitposts will be meant to poke at the border between painful "realism" and practically usable rules and ideas that make the game more fun. Even if 99% will never ever practically work, I think it might be fun just to think about some of the ideas we can strip mine. Most characters are not assumed to have some kind of chronic disease, but drugs are not only used by people who are sick.

Today's topic is: pharmacology! Originally the idea was based around potions, but the principles here are a bit more expansive. I'll lay down some of the basic ideas I think can be interesting:

• Delivery methods
• Side effects/long term effects
• Dosing and alternative uses 
• Mechanism of Action
• Source: biochemical tools, alchemy, natural occurrence

Delivery methods feels like it can be fun, but I have no idea what it would look like exactly. You drink potions. BORING. Oral ingestion is (usually) a slower, long drawn release of drug effects that is affected by stomach acid and the liver it has to cross through. 

Snorting is a bit better, so is rubbing powder on mucus membranes. INJECTIONS are pretty cool. Your fighter popped a healing potion? Ok well mine just pinned himself with adrenaline and is getting ready to eat your fighter's face off. Into the veins and arteries is standard. Maybe a regenerative solution ingested will provide slow, stable healing over a few days while an injected solution will let you reattach limbs on the fly for less fluid. Roll for cancer though.

Brain and spine injections feel like they can go far. A lot of delivery methods are also related to where the destination needs to be. Potion of truesight delivered right into the eyeball? Or maybe give someone some MPTP, and watch them develop Parkinson's disease right before your very eyes.

Potential way to use this: 

Drinking a health potion should give you a long riding, general improvement to healing. For one week, you recover from lethal damage twice as fast and add +4 to con rolls. Maybe even throw in something like "add +2 (or roll 1d4) as a bonus every time you recover HP"

Intravenous Injection of half a health potion lets you recover 2d6 HP or bypass a con save/roll. Only doable once per day before you roll % for liver toxicity or cancer development (-1 max HP every month until death for simplicity). Severed body parts can be mostly reattached within 24 hours if held in place. 1 HP regen every round?

Site specific injection might be more useful through a narrative lense, existing as a tool that isn't necessarily bound by strict rules. It might also work better for something that is not a health potion. For example, you have a potion that boosts the abilities of wizards. Chug it in combat for a quick and dirty buff, sure. OR, you could lay the wizard down on an operating table and inject the potion directly into a brain ventricle or his lumbar spine. After a week or so, the wizard gains a more minor but permanent buff.

The main takeaway is that potions or exogenous compounds shouldn't only have one method of use; HOW PCs make us of these tools can have differing effects. And, if you wanted to make healing harder but didn't want to remove health potions entirely, make them more "challenging" to use.

And you don't absolutely need fancy modern syringes either. The first "syringe" was made using a quill and an animal's bladder (no promises about quality though; 1% chance of infection when you inject if you want to be cruel, or have it be on an X in 20 chance if you don't take 10 minutes to clean the syringe beforehand).

Side effects is just shorthand for tradeoffs. The real gameable principle is that anytime your PCs may wish to use drugs for their benefit, they will have to weigh the side effects. Nausea for 1d6 rounds, falling asleep, unstoppable bleeding, momentary amnesia, dyskinesia, trouble sleeping, tremors, need to eat more, need to drink more water, blood clotting, etc... Many of these side effects can easily be repurposed into things that affect the game: resting ability, dex rolls, no memory can be interesting RP, blood loss, risk of heart attack.

Another avenue to consider is long term side effects. This may be difficult to actually model. While I am sure you could generate a system where every [length of time] you need to make a con roll that gets progressively harder with the amount of drug used, it is hard to say if your campaigns ever last that long in in game time for your characters to feel their nuts shrinking from taking too much exogenous testosterone.

A digression: any character good with pharmacology for buffs and healing will also probably be quite good at killing and poisons.

All poisons are just drugs that are dosed to kill. I am sure you can figure out how rampant cell division and growth in a "health potion" might be used to kill someone. For that matter, you might also realize that a drug that provides growth might also be useful as a PED. (IRL, many tumors in men respond strongly to testosterone, due to its effects on growth; how much does your fighter want that +1 strength?).

A drug or plant that decreases water retention might not be all that useful if none of your PCs have a disease that requires a diuretic, but give enough of it to a scumbag enemy and they may just pee themselves into dehydration and death.

Or I guess you could just get the duke's daughter addicted to opiates or something to destabilize the war effort. Really, the sky's the limit here.

As it turns out, the most useful thing about pharmacology might not healing others or your PCs, but killing all of the PC's enemies.

PEDs and "steroid" type drugs may be interesting, but might only be worth thinking about if you can keep them short term. Combat drugs with downsides is easy. Long term use of steroids in a fighter looks like... I have no clue! Trenbolone is a very funny androgen; IRL it can be used to gain quite a lot of muscle while losing fat and being in ridiculously low body fat %. Apparently it also makes you ridiculously horny, paranoid, and a mess to be around. I feel like this can be used, but HOW?

Wizard nootropics is also an interesting topic; take this pill to ramp up your magic dice or spell slots, when you come down you have a risk of getting schizophrenia or spell psychosis.

An older idea I once had: Wizards learn too many spells and begin to slide into spell psychosis. Some of these wizards take a drug/herb/thing that prevents their spell psychosis. BUT, it also limits their ability to cast spells in general and comes with a number of basically int decreasing effects. If you can't really access a big part of your brain, you might get brain fog. Right before battle (or anything that involves a lot of spells), they wean themselves off the drug and hope that they're not so crazy by the end of all this that they fuck off and forget to take their meds.

I suppose you could create an entire pharmacology "class" or profession out of this. There is so much potential information in here that you could really go hard. Healer classes where you cast a handful of protection spells are boring. But a bootleg fantasy medic might be neat. If you have a gritty setting with low access to magic, someone who knows how to administer stem cell injections, dose drug effects, do basic surgeries, and make poisons becomes extremely valuable (and I think versatile).

But personally I think things like this should be accessible to all players. How it manifests needs some work.

A very important concept in pharmacology is Mechanism of Action (MoA). The precise mechanism of how a drug works can open up different ways for you to use them. 

A real life example: blood pressure medication. Some are ACE inhibitors, which prevent the creation of angiotensin, the molecule that signals for vasoconstriction. Sildenafil (viagra) inhibits PDE5 which increases cGMP, which promotes vasodilation. Nitroglycerin (a nitrate) also increases cGMP through a different mechanism. 

They both can have similar effects, but the exact symptoms and side effects can be different. Furthermore, they can compound on each other; if someone is having chest pain and high blood pressure during an EMT call, one of the treatment options is the patient's nitroglycerin. BUT, you ALWAYS have to ask if the patient has taken any sexual enhancement drugs, because the combination will vasodilate the patient too much and KILL THEM.

If you want to, you can also design fun drug combination effects. The main point of using MoA is that you may be able to create a "health potion" in at least a handful of different ways. 

Does the potion only accelerate natural healing and body functions? Effects: Cancer/"curse"/degenerative disease acceleration, rapid aging. 

Does the potion use stem cells to generate and populate the wound with new cells? Effects: developing cancer risk, may only work for some injuries and not others (for example, new neurons in the brain does not necessarily do anything without the same connections). Or maybe they do and you give your spellcaster a big fat brain, maybe you can use it to slowly regrow a limb!

Does the potion actually just encourage the release of body growth factors? Maybe you can use it as a "steroid" for your fighter.

Is the potion actually just a blended troll? Better be careful not to infect yourself with micro trolls.

Or maybe the potion is time fluid secreted by gigantic fate weaver spiders. Drink too much and you might accidentally reverse your memory and your body.

As you can see, MoA can integrate fantasy fairly well. These lines of thought can be really interesting for thinking about biomancy.

Drugs do not come from all the same places either. Some can be created in a lab with basic materials, others can be synthesized from plants, and others can be harvested from complex organisms. 

It is possible to integrate alchemical potions and drugs. You might fit it into a class or just have it as something PCs can do if they find an alchemist's notebook and get the right materials. But the more interesting option might be how you use gathering of biologically sourced compounds, specifically from monsters and other creatures.

The king has a quest for you: bring him the fresh penis bone of a Great Red Drake to be boiled into a fertility bone broth. As thanks, he will let you take some with you so that you too may enjoy a prodigious sexual enhancement stew, aphrodisiac, and fertility therapy.

There's room to fit in some pseudoscience/folk medicine/homeopathy stuff in here as well. What is dragon adrenochrome like? Maybe eating the heart of great beast actually does make you stronger. Or at least, it increases your charisma by 1, making you just a bit more "real" in the world.

Another example I need to get out of my head: there is a hormone known as HCG that is created by pregnant women involved in cell growth. This chemical has also been used in real life as an anabolic steroid adjunct. Here's the thing: before people learned how to harvest the hormone itself, the only way to really get HCG is in the urine of pregnant women.

How do we use this information? I'm not sure encouraging PCs to drink pregnant monster piss for stat bonuses is something you would necessarily want in your game, and harvesting the trophoblast cells around the early embryo has some "off putting" implications. But the actual implementation of these things, if you wanted to use them, doesn't seem too hard.

One last one, I promise. If you like putting a dash of sci fi into your setting, you may enjoy investigating beyond traditional ideas of drugs. 

The most notorious of the up and coming potentials is gene therapy. Specifically, gene therapy using viral vectors to deliver the cargo into the cells you attempt to treat. Current methods of injection make delivery one of the core limitations. If you wanted to target the brain, there is really no other option than to directly inject into a ventricle, the spinal cord, or directly into brain matter.

But for D&D we do not need to be held back by such things. That thing about injecting a wizard for a permanent buff? Gene therapy. Your family curse? Gene "therapy". Elixir of youth? Gene therapy.  

Beyond the merely biological you can get some neat ideas out of concept of "integrated biology": a rampant DNA code that tries to mimic whatever it eats, or maybe whatever it touches. Liches that control all their bodily functions, and use this to slowly turn themselves into things that are unrecognizable from their humanity.

The "dude" virus: A man feels feverish one day, goes about his business, collapses over, and dies. Over the next day or so his body breaks down into viral sludge and attempts to infect as many people as possible. The infected are slowly turned into clones of the first man who died, perhaps with memories limited to the day of infection. After maybe a week of assimilation the infected dies and sludgifies again. 

After a few cycles, you get mutations in the viral strains. The "dude" changes a bit over time. Or, you have someone who acts as a carrier. Either as a "dude" who never reaches the sludge phase, or as a normal person who turns everyone else into "dudes" upon contact.

Some of these viruses are designed to be "cre dependent", which basically means that they have specific effects when a particular compound is ingested and then "activates" the programmed gene sequence. Practically speaking this just adds trigger conditions. 

None of these ideas actually need to integrate any of the concepts I mentioned. It's entirely possible to have each thing as a standalone phenomena in your setting and having it completely untouched by these shitpost frameworks; the hope is that by introducing some of these framework concepts, it might help to jog a different perspective for creative juices.

Bad Idea Shitpost: Ranged Autism

Currently this game does not have prevailing rules for ranged weapons. Somewhat because no one ever actually has used one yet. No one in Lair of the Lamb actually used the sling or the bow, and the fighter in Tomb of the Serpent Kings hasn't used his bow either.

Combination of resource management (no one wants to use their ammo if they don't have to) and what I would like to imagine is clever gameplay; no one is really getting themselves into a combat situation in the first place.

However, the time will come when someone actually tries to kill something else from far away. Either the players or, much more likely, me.

This is all largely inspired by Delta's 2011 post on D&D archery and probability curves and also by my instinctive drive for "realistic" emulation of certain mechanics. The post gives a rather nice table of a computer calculated probability to hit a target based on a certain range. When plotted, the graph looks something like this:  

Nice. Notably, the decrease in accuracy is rather sudden from 200-400 feet than begins to taper out, taking longer and longer distances to become less accurate.

If I limit the amount of data that is used for a graph, I can also get some basic exponential equations for extrapolating further distances.

Somewhat useful. Despite the awful compression of these images, the basic trend lines can still be seen. (This particular screenshot is actually from when I was using polynomial equations, but a parabola doesn't make any sense) Equations are thus:

y=174e^{-.00357x}

y=165e^{-.00347x}

More or less the same result at a significant distance, a bit less accurate once you get closer. Both of these equations merely say that at a range of 1000 feet the computer calculated probability to hit is basically 5%. How sweet, roll those crits baby!

So how to we use this? This is where autistic emulation collides with practical goals. Is it fun to create a plethora of rules for how range and modifiers is supposed to be calculated? Not really. They can be hard to remember. This doesn't even factor in things such as skill of the archer, enemy AC, attack stats, environment, etc... 

Which is why I am not going to give a shit about those. Attack and defense rolls are already intuitive, there is no need to mess around with those. So long as range is (more or less) the only major factor when using ranged weapons 95% of the time, even a relatively autistic method should be fine. 

Of course, the assumption is also that when important, you will add or subtract modifiers. e.g. blinded, hard to see shit, hurricane winds, shooting into a crowd. But it may just be easier in those cases to just chuck in a basic -2 or -4 or just tell your PCs that it's not worth even attempting the roll in these occasions. These are rather situational; range is important enough that I felt the need to figure this out.

My basic solution was to define a bunch of parameters that stack -2 modifiers on the attack roll. So parameters of 100/200/300 feet would imply 100-200 as -2 and 200-400 as -4. By the time you reach 600 feet, you will have like 8 or 9 different -2 parameters. 

Theoretically you can extrapolate this out to like -20 or some shit using the equations but I would emphasize that these calculations should only ever be used in niche situations (trying to noscope the dragon 1000 feet away).

Practically, I think only labeling the first two or so parameters is usually good enough. For a longbow, anything between 0-150 feet of distance has no negative modifier at all. There are very few dungeon rooms where 150 feet of distance is even possible (let along with light). Full thing: 150/210/240/270/300/360/450/ 540/700

The original post goes into the theoretical probabilities as a pairing of a 12th level fighter from AD&D and a target of AC 10. While you could try to pair the probabilities around these expectations to change the range parameters, I think it's close enough to not give a shit.

You could also crunch the parameters into groups of -4 instead. The original post uses a -5 and -10 parameter. But for my game in which ranged combat is not exactly a likely expectation, highly staggered parameters I think are ok.

Or, just use what you already have. Unless you're super into wargaming and certain mechanics these rules don't even have to exist. Just use a flat range or the standard ideas of your preferred system. Elegant minimalism to facilitate the parts of the game you want to emphasize should always trump autistic equations.

For my game, this only practically affects snipers. Everything needs to be closer, and things become more dangerous. I like that. But if you want the opposite result then you can flip this on its head. After all, even though having light "should" make you more likely to be seen in the dark, the theme of the Mythical Underworld has led me to use an encounter system that punishes being in darkness. Light, in a game that is focused on dungeon crawling, should not be punished in this game.

The main point is; think about the themes of your game first before you implement any rule.

Also, if you do end up with parameters, it should be fairly easy to use them for different types of weapons. I plan to just shift the range curve down until I think I'm satisfied. Realistic? Maybe not, but it should work!

KILL

KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL HERE ARE SOME UNGA BUNGA WEAPONS

Stone spear, axe, mallets, knives: classic neolithic stone weapons/tools. All are one handed except for the spear. Some people think the sword is the archetypal weapon of mankind, but the spear is a certified hut classic. 

Bow and arrow: Also pretty classic, definitely possible for the tribes to have even made their own versions of longbows (fit to be used by insanely strong hunters). I'm not even gonna put an actual image here, you can figure out what this would look like.

War clubs: Maori clubs also exist but they kind of just look like paddles. The first image is an example of a native american war club. The second shows two other types of war clubs, fijian. The third is a root club, which is sick as fuck. Historically, these tended to be one handed weapons, but I won't cry and shit myself if the PCs used two handed war clubs.

Spear slings: Hilarious chad weapon. Crazy thing: world record throw for one of things is over 848 feet. Would that be accurate? Probably not, but I like the idea of a war painted barbarian taking aim at some milklander archer and nailing a spear arrow through their stupid little head. 

Obsidian based weapons: macuahuitl are great. I'd probably let someone count it as a two handed weapon. King of like a weird greatsword. Obsidian knives and cutting edges are very nice. Obsidian is rather fragile so carved swords were never used, but obsidian knives are usable. 

Bone stabbers: Human (or maybe non human) femur bones sharpened into stabbers. Unbelievably cool. Almost anything made of bone could also have hypothetically been made from the bones of longstriders (supposed giant-kin) during the Revanwall super genocides.

100% fantasy world shit: Jawbone kukris are mentioned, even though they don't actually exist. I don't care though. Gigantic predatory jawbones could easily be turned into axe heads or war picks.

Carved giant bones can probably be used as big ass war clubs or spikes. There's definitely something to be done with mammoth tusks, and the fangs of giant beasts and spiders are probably usable as the killing bits of weapons.

There are definitely weapons to be made from monster materials. But the point is that, in general, spears and clubs are some of the easier things to make using the methods of the tribes. In order for a sword to be useful it will probably have to be made from metal. You definitely can also say you took metal weapons from a lowlander, but most tribesmen would not consider metal weapons particularly superior.

In the Veins, most weapons made by cultures down there use bone and stone exclusively (wood doesn't grow very well). It may also be possible for PCs to have traded/obtained a sword or certain type of weapon from the caves. Examples include mantis-shrimp swords and scissorfish knives. 

All said, a well made spear or war club will not fail you.

Galacriq, the Lowlanders, and the Border Tribes

FUCKING POLITICAL LORE BASIC INFO SHEET

Let's get this shit out of the way. All info is known by PCs and is roughly equivalent with their perspective.

Lowlanders: Lowlanders, milklanders, rust people, rosebuds, softlings, it's all the same to you. They are estranged from Mother Mountain. Yes, some of them carry different colors on their flags, wear different clothes, live in different buildings, but in the ways that are important the red people are all the same.

They do not know the embrace of the earth, and so they made their own stone hives to hide away in. But their lands have made them weak. Hunger is foreign or evil to them, and their precious metals fail them when they climb. The rust, the cold, the caves. 

Many times have the lowlanders attempted to take Mother Mountain. None have succeeded. None will ever succeed.

Galacriq: Long ago, the lowlanders scaled the Break and built their buzzing stone

hives to prepare for an invasion deeper into the heart of the Mountain. They are gone now; their bones litter the bottom of the Break. So many were thrown down in those days that the Red Kings never could find and bury all those shattered bodies, piled so high that some of the screaming rosebuds survived the fall. Their walls did not hold. Their hives, built upon the Veins, were merely pulsing stone bags of meat for youngling rites of passage.

The lowlanders have never forgotten. Their humiliation, their rage. Like petulant children they do not understand. Everything comes with sacrifice. Mother Mountain gives, and expects in return. They call Mother a demon, and yet all the lowlanders have done is take, and give nothing in return. No stories of loss, no stories of pain, no stories of blood.

After the slaughter, Mother Mountain made peace with the lowlanders. Not that they understood. Tell a lowlander that loss made them stronger and they will spit venom at you. Some of the tribes believe they are a lost cause. But one exception exists.

The stronghold of Galacriq survives. You have warred with them for centuries. Generations have come and gone, shedding blood into the river that irrigates their farms. And now, their princess broaches peace. Or, at least, a marriage to hold the peace. Tension and excitement is in the air.

Many of the rosebuds cannot forget their pain, but the elders of the tribes are excited. A thousand years of blood feuds. A thousand years to know each other. Somehow, these rosebuds understand you. They had to learn; how else could they survive here? They understand loss, pain, and hunger. They only need to learn to let it go. Who knows? Maybe you will embrace these red hive warriors as brothers and sisters one day.

Brotherhood of Titanium Avalanche

It was not terribly long ago that the tribes of Titanium Avalanche were strangers and enemies. Feuding and warring in the caves at the foot of the mountain. The city was not home then. The old king was of another tribe, ruthless. Those days were filled with constant fighting. With each other, with the rosebuds of the hive, and with Titanium Avalanche. 

It was your king who first wished for brotherhood. Together, the brotherhood descended the dungeon and claimed the crown from the old king's tribe, an extraordinarily difficult task. The old king's tribe was driven to the north, their bitter tears leaving crystal blooms in the snow. This is not normal. No one yet knows how the border tribes feel about this usurpation.

Now your king is bound to Titanium Avalanche. He prepares for the day when the old king's tribe may attempt to retake their city, for the day when the other tribes make their opinions known, and for when the Cloud tyrants may finally be reached. He is terribly interested in how Galacriq may make the brotherhood stronger. Perhaps, with all his plans, the rosebuds were not the only ones who learned.

Border Tribes

There are countless tribes along the Break. Dozens of them can be found with a decently thorough trip through the forests. But most of these are small. Tribes reduced to a handful or a few dozen. There are a few that are much more relevant. 

Ash Roses: Beyond Galacriq, bordered by the first mountain ridges along the Break, is the Hollow Mountain. The husk of a dead fire god, its body remained empty and devoid for as long as the tribes could remember. Too lifeless for any man, and too much light for any of the creatures below. Until, not three generations ago, it became the home of a sky serpent.

Fire and waste. Galacriq once protected another settlement; their only way to maintain a connection to the lowlands. The lands beyond the stronghold were burned to ash, the people ground to mince. Over time, the soil has become rich; perfect for grazing livestock. The personal pantry of Klauth.

The dragon has made his home in the Hollow Mountain, and seen fit to take servants for himself. For nearly a hundred years, he has plucked lowlanders and their children into his lair. Now, they worship him as a god, golden and gleaming.

The tribes have watched, nervously, as Klauth rooted himself deep inside the Hollow Mountain. They could not do anything about it, but that was before. The brother wars have ceased, and the dragon's ashen rosebuds have been seen closer and closer to the Mountain. When violence breaks, no one will be surprised.

Bloodskull: The old king's tribe. The fled, weeping, into the north. Since then, no one has seen them. An optimistic lowlander might shrug and believe that they all died in the glaciers. But the bodies counted by those who followed suggests otherwise. 

First they found the frozen bodies of the sick. Trampled into the snow, they were almost unnoticed. 

Then the bodies of the elders torn apart by wolves, rictus grins affixed and tears frozen on their cheeks; they laughed as they threw themselves into the jaws of the predators. 

Then the children, throats slit and tongues taken, left behind as a distraction at the mouth of the Cloud Maker. 

Then a mass of bodies beneath a blood lake's frozen surface. Skinned, nearly unrecognizable, with their wombs and eyes missing.

Then the clothes of their shamans. Scrimshaws, inks, necklaces, paints, all left in a clutter. Right next to hundreds of human scalps.

The warriors were never seen.

Shattered Moonlight: They live in the maze of the Cloud Maker, nestled in between the glaciers and Mother Mountain. They are not the worst neighbors, but it would be a mistake to consider them allies. Long before the brotherhood and the Bloodskulls, the local tribes feared the tribesmen of the Cloud Maker.

You may find them in the ice tunnels, hanging from the ceiling from sharpened claws, bright eyes glowing in gaunt sockets and black veins. Take a wrong turn in the maze and you will find hundreds of dancing stars hovering above you deep in the earth.

They are always ravenously hungry, and Mother Mountain loves them for being so. So hungry they are, that when they devour your flesh they will so to devour your memories and dreams. They have never lost a war. Parents tell their children not to wander into the Cloud Maker, lest the shamans steal away their souls.

If you happen upon the wasteland of spikes, or upon the skull obelisks, you will know that the Cloud Maker is near.

The Changed: The Shattered Moonlight Tribe found many things, deep in the Cloud Maker. Strange metals and strange puzzle artifacts. They learned the secrets of Change.

Once, there were tribes who sought to challenge the Shattered Moonlight tribe. Either to take the Cloud Maker for themselves, or to destroy their most threatening enemy. They lost, and became the Changed.

The Changed are not a tribe, though many tribes exist. Something about them has been unmade. Something that made them human. Some can still be recognized as the men they once were, from a distance. They will seem odd, hunched, move strangely. As you approach, you will notice the differences. 

Misshapen bodies, thick brows, strange noses. The whites of their eyes have gone. They have too much hair. They will speak in an uncanny mimicry of language. The words don't make sense, the ideas aren't there. Many of the Changed just grunt and hoot, a theatre of horrific uncomfortable almost people behavior.

They litter the north, hiding in the caves, hills, and glaciers, never far from the Cloud Maker; a permanent reminder of the dominion of Shattered Moonlight.

Longstriders: Referenced from this post. Most on this side of the mountain are dead. The cities deep within the mountain still retain some of their kind of slaves, but the tribes on the Eastern half of the Mountain were not so gentle.

A few stragglers remain. Nomadic merchants using these lands as a temporary rest or small solitary tribes. There is no great reason to kill them anymore; the war ended generations ago. Almost half of the bone used in construction of buildings, tribal ornaments, weapons, or settlements is longstrider bone.

Post Apocalypse Occultic Stone Age Super Savages

Shamelessly STOLEN and PLAGIARIZED (Literally. I didn't bother the change the text that I kept) from Arnold's tables for barbarian tribes.

Life out here is tough. It is fucked up. Almost everyone and everything is trying to kill you. (To be fair, you are also trying to kill almost anything you come across on top of the Break).

The Xan'dun savages upon the Break aren't just barbarians, they are neolithic killing machines. Metal isn't a luxury they have, but killing other things using stone and bone can still be quite effective.

Each PC is considered a hero in their respective tribe. Each was respected even before they descended into the dungeon of the last King to retrieve his crown.

• PCs start the game as lvl 3 barbarians
• When rolling for stats, roll Str, Con, and Cha as ((4d6)+1)/2. (if charisma is rolled lower than 7, increase it to 7)
• Roll other stats as normal
• HP calculation:
• lvl 1 = con 
• lvl 2 = con+2
• lvl 3 = con+4
• lvl 4 = con+6
• Each level of barbarian also gives +2 HP. lvl 3 = con+10
• Inventory: str+(whatever bag you carry), backpacks are +7, sacks are +4
• Also, if you can describe how you attach something to your body without putting it into your sack or backpack, you may carry it without adding it to the bag
• Each PC has 1d6 stories of loss. You may keep these in reserve and spend them to gain information. For example, when you encounter a creature in the Veins of the Earth and do not know what it is, you may use a story of loss to recall tales of how your ancestors and family members died that relate to the current scenario
• Each PC has 1d4 reports of peril. For each report of peril, roll a 1d6 to determine the theme of what almost killed you. DM will determine specific details. Each report of peril can either give your PC +1 max hp and lethal damage cap OR +4 to saves of a relatively specific nature. Example: You lost your grip while climbing, fell, almost died, but recovered. You could take the hp and lethal damage bonus or get a +4 save to either losing grip or falling.

1. Geography
2. Flaura
3. Fauna
4. Other Tribes
5. Roll Again
6. The Veins

• Each PC starts with 1 scar and 1 scar slot. To get more scar slots, take 100 damage. (Note: you should be recording the damage you take in your "history of violence"). The first scar is for Xan'dun tribesmen. All PCs have this scar and any Xan tribesman worth their salt will also have one of these. For reference on scar functions, read the prime ability for barbarians.
• The PCs will likely have several skills that will not be clarified until they are relevant but, notably, the climbing, pole falling, and pole vaulting skills start at 5 for all PCs.
• Xan'dun tribesmen may partake in cannibalisms without becoming ghouls so long as the proper rituals and acknowledgements of sacrifice are given.

As mentioned before, PCs may choose to bring two of their tribesmen with them on their journey. This is optional and is a choice that must be reasoned and decided upon before the PCs set out from Titanium Avalanche.

Each PC will choose to belong to one of the tribes below. Currently choices are not exclusive but that may change depending on if it is necessary. Tribe traits and hero perks can both apply to the PC.

Neolithic Murderhobos

Ivory Thunder (tribal naming conventions are considered ridiculous to outsiders)

Boring Tribe Shit: Have 1d6 tame mammoths. The largest mammoth will have an enchantment braided into its hair. This enchantment give them either (a) the gaze of the vor-mammut 1/day, save or suffer broken limb, or (b) weaponized birth, a half-demon baby mammoth with HD 4, tusks for 1d8 + save pain 1 rnd, damage cannot be healed except by magic. Shamans walk around on stilts, wear deer skulls adorned with women's scalps. They vomit smoke that induces fear.

Hero perk: Wears a backwards mammoth skull on their head like a helmet. Gives +4 defense and very good head protection (fucks up your movement, vision, and coordination for anyone else, would also take up 2 inventory slots). Understands the body language of beasts and is very adept at animal handling.

Deathblow

Boring Tribe Shit: Half of the warriors are elderly. Half HP, but unless you coup-de-grace them, or drop them to -5, they will spend their dying turn cursing the player. (Curse of Ill Omen: next critical hit turns into a critical miss.) Shamans are instructed by a troll, who spends most of its time slumbering in the center of the village, covered in flags, rags, and offerings. They sing to make the earth eat their enemies.

Hero perk: Wields a giant 12 foot sword covered in prayer flags. Increase damage by one die size. Weapon also counts as a magical +2 nimbus iron greatsword with reach. The sword will always find its way back to the Heir. Takes up 2 inv slot in the hands of the Heir but takes up 6 for anyone else. Speaks fluent giantish. (PC does not have to be a half HP old dude unless the player desires, but they will be able to curse someone with their dying breath).

Giantish: Scrawled and graffitied across the Mountain. Spoken by Trolls, who sing to the earth in this tongue. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Hum with your stomach, the soft resonant language of the Mountain's firstborn, who once heard these tones deep inside the womb of the earth. Put your ear against a boulder, hug it gently. You will hear it in your bones, the whisper in the rock.

Golden Psychic Evisceration

Boring Tribe Shit: The greatest warriors are castrated, and their remaining genitalia stuffed into elaborate cod-pieces: scrimshaw mammoth tusks or narwhal horns. Their severed gonads are used in a fertility ritual by a chosen girl to conceive a hero-child. Tribe has +1d3-1 heroes. Shamans only wear things produced by the human body. They can be damaged, but not killed, by manufactured weapons. They scream to heat metal.

Hero perk: Naked and wielding a sharp rock (as a handaxe). Blessed by the spirits of wild places and immune to damage from all crafted weapons. Loses this power if they ever wear clothing or any crafted thing. Covered in lice, but possesses a statuesque physique and kingly demeanor.

Nocturnal Brutalism

Boring Tribe Shit: Women have each amputated a well-tattooed breast and turned it into jerky. If eaten, they cannot be reduced below 1 HP by non-magical weapons. Lasts 2 hours. Over ½ of fighters will be female, and 1/3 of female fighters will still have their jerkied breast in their inventory. Shamans are all little girls, wearing hair shirts and lizard scale bangles. They are all identical twins, and share a pseudo-hivemind (empathy, local telepathy only), and are products of an intergenerational witch. The first one to get pregnant will give birth to the next generation of the witch sister hivemind. They are found to be universally charming/friendly, and if at least four of them surround someone, they ensorcle someone as “dominate person” (maintained by one of the girls).

Hero perk: Capable of absolutely insane jumps. Like 50' horizontal. Always jumps into combat with a +4 spear attack, dealing double damage. Covered in red body paint with dozens of bird skulls woven into their hair.

Frostbitten Bastard

Boring Tribe Shit: Blinded at birth with a sharp rock and a burning stick. Navigate the world through fine tuned tongue clicks and the taste of the air on their burnt sockets. +2 to attack and defense rolls against them if you can see them, but -4 to both rolls in the dark. Shamans are permanently invisible. They have invisible gems in their eye sockets. If extracted, these gems can be used to make lenses for an invisible lantern (the lantern is invisible, not the indirect light it produces). 

Hero perk: Wears the fur of a calcinated cancer bear. Nightmare Skull belt buckle. Possesses strength equivalent to a hill giant (double str score), as well as a hill giant's ability to throw big rocks: -4 to hit, 2d8 damage, up to 30 feet range. (For the PC this translates to -2 to attack and defense or +4)

Note on bastard strength: You can imagine this as having "the strength of ten men". Mostly applies to brute strength and less so to generation of power (which influences acceleration of movement and ultimately force of impact). Your hands probably do count for 1d6 damage though.

She-wolf's Malevolent Entrails

Boring Tribe Shit: Half of the warriors are children. Children have half HP, but if they drug themselves before combat, they get two attacks. The drug is the insufflated, pulverized liver of a raven that has been fed increasing amounts of poisonous lichen its whole life. Shamans are constantly snorting hallucinogenic lichens from turtle shell snuff boxes. They are wrapped in their own hallucinations, and appear to be male, female, young, old, cheerful, depressed. . . sometimes all at the same time. Their ancestors sometimes stand behind them, whispering in their ears. They make the air swim with illusions.

Hero perk: Carries an enormous wineskin full of fermented goat's milk. Wears a stupid hat (ironically) taken from some milklander they killed. Will drink booze while they fight, getting drunker and drunker. Drunkenness: in addition to +1 crit fumble range, attacks deal +2 damage. Drunkenness stacks everytime you drink/use firewater. (PCs do not have to be half HP children unless they would like to be)

Raven liver powder: Can be taken at the same time PC rages. After rage ends, PC gains 1 level of exhaustion (-4 to all rolls until sleep). If drunk, roll a 1d6 after rage ends. Drunkenness points are equal to the "snooze range". Rolling in the snooze range causes the pc to pass out for a number of hours equal to what you rolled. 3 points of drunkenness: 1-3 snooze range. After 6 points of drunkenness, the PC will automatically pass out until tomorrow in 1d6+3 rounds or until rage ends.

The liver powder does not work on anyone outside the tribe. The tribe members have been fed drug cocktails since they were born to tolerate it. Anyone else gets a pounding headache, pulsing veins, and sometimes dies of a heart attack.

(Unintelligible growling) best translated as "Skintakers"

Boring Tribe Shit: Fight alongside a pack of 3d6 wolves. The chieftain is actually a worg, and the wolves are higher ranked than the human barbarians. Shamans are all wolves, or perhaps the spirits of ancestors reincarnated into wolves. They are shaved and tattooed with colorful screed. They walk around on two legs, but drop to all four legs when they need to run at full speed. Speak in mewling growls that almost sound like words. They run like the wind.

Hero perk: Raised by wolves. Wears wolf head over their own head. Fights with a pair of jawbone kukris. Is accompanied by their pack sibling, another wolf. If both attack the same target in unison (as they usually do), they both get +2 to hit.

Decapitation

Boring Tribe Shit: Made a deal with a demon in a hole. Half the tribesmen are missing an arm or a leg. Unless dismembered or turned to paste, tribe members return to life in 1d6 turns. Shamans are small quadruple amputees. Rolling eyes, echolalia. They are carried on the backs of their (full-sized) siblings inside wicker cages. They can rip the water from living things.

Hero perk: Stone-eyed exemplar of barbarian fighting techniques. Perfused with feathered piercings and has a face covered with tattoos. Eagle feathers braided into hair and eagle claws hanging from belt. Fights with a pair of obsidian daggers. Whenever someone attacks in melee and misses, the barbarian gets a free attack against them. If the PC dies, they may start every turn rolling Xd4-lethal damage (X=barbarian lvl). They recover that many HP that round and get up. If lethal damage is too high, PC will need to recover lethal damage over time (while dead) before returning to life is possible. This works as long as the "full" body is in "one piece". (PC does not have to be missing an arm unless it is desired).

Organ Apocalypse

Boring Tribe Shit: Know how to revive those who have frozen to death. They will have 1d3-1 additional heroes frozen in a secret basement in their village, and if needed, they will thaw them in a 12 hour ritual to defend their village. 2-in-6 chance to also have a foreign scholar, linguist, or wizard on cold storage as well. Shamans crawl on all four and have long hair. They wear masks of knotted wood-whorls, painted purple, white, and blue. They speak backwards and can command others.

Hero perk: Tremendously fat. Has +10 HP. Carries an infinite bandolier of 1 HD, 1 HP, DEF plate, bite 1d4 rabid weasels, which they will throw at people before closing into melee. If they trip or fall over, 2d6 rabid weasels will escape, half of which will run away, and the other half will join combat. (Practically, after making the weasel attack roll, roll a 1d6. This is the number of rounds the target will be scrambling with the weasel, which will do 1 damage every turn).

Reminiscence of Slaughter

Boring Tribe Shit: Brained a druid in his sleep, stole his secrets from his shattered head, threw their children into small holes with polar bear cubs and starved them. Tribesmen grow big, mean, and are covered in white hairs. 2 HD. Always ambush their enemies and surprise them in the wilderness but are rather stupid and fight like animals. Easily manipulated with food and goodies. Shamans are enveloped in long, thick white fur and can gangstalk intelligent beings in their dreams.

Hero perk: Is an intelligent polar bear. Counts as large and has double HP (HP from all sources is doubled). Has low light vision and an excellent sense of smell. Can make two 1d6 claw attacks per turn. Bite deals 1d10 damage. Can pin smaller creatures if both claw attacks strike the same target; +4 attack against pinned targets.

If you truly do not care about your character's demographics and want to randomly generate them, use these:

• Age: 18+2d6
• Sex: 
• Nocturnal Brutalism: 25% male, 75% female
• Golden Psychic Evisceration: 25% female, 75% male
• All Others: half and half male and female
• If you want to add some extra variation, intersex options can be used for a 1 or 20 on a die roll.
• If you can't decide on a personality and appearance, use the pic below from Lair of the Lamb.

Now Draw Her Getting an Education

Some notes for studying spells for wizardry:

Spell formula literacy is itself a skill (fractured comprehension). It lets you figure out what a spell might be by studying how it was written, how it dances on the page, and how it reacts when you play with it. Useful because you might not actually want to fully comprehend what you're looking at.

You can never be absolutely certain what a spell is without learning the spell.

You do not have to actually comprehend a spell to cast it. (Spellbooks are useful BECAUSE you don't really need to learn them. Helps offset the psychosis).

To absorb a spell, you must spend time with a spellbook and make an effort to fully comprehend the nature of it. This goes beyond recitation and reading, it is an understanding of the being that composes the spell

For practical use: every full day you spend studying and looking at it, roll an int check to see if you comprehend the spell. Every additional day of studying adds a +1. Other things can probably boost this; demon conversation skills for example probably also increases this roll by +4. Average DC is 30, modified by how zesty the spell's personality is.

After absorbing a spell, you will need to wait (Spell DC)-(int+spellreading) days to absorb another spell or risk spell psychosis. This type of spell psychosis is usually believed to be temporary and related to the number of days the wizard should have been recovering, but then again there have been permanent cases afterwards. You'd be surprised how much damage a wizard under psychosis can do in less than a week.

They tend to be very noticeable and violent events but are usually preceded by odd mental quirks. Probably has something to do with too many minds and personalities inside of too limited a vessel. Or something to do with the balance of brain juices

Spell psychosis will also be a risk if the number of your absorbed spells exceeds your int/2 round down.

Learning spells increases int and MD with diminishing returns. For example, first two spells increases int and MD by 1, then the next two increases require spells each, then three, then four, etc...

Spell Psychosis

Scribing a spell is also an individual skill you need to learn, but the basics involve mixing inks with brain jelly and having something to write on.

Compared with learning a spell, once you know how the scribing works any given spell in your head will take 2d20-(int+spellwriting) hours to write down. Sometimes this is an all nighter, but you will find it very very difficult to tear yourself away from the writing process once you begin. If you do, you will risk spell psychosis.

Writing the spell down removes the spell from your brain (and also undo the int and MD increases; a wizard who writes down all their spells is no different from an eccentric, "educated", normal dude).

There is no cooldown for writing down spells, but you still need to wait before re-learning a different (or maybe the same) spell. Your head juices need time to reorganize anyways.

It is possible to directly transfer a spell from your brain into another using touch. This is only possible if the wizard performing the transfer suffers from spell psychosis.

And remember, with the right tools you can treat a dead wizard's brain like a fleshy spellbook.

Effects of Spell Psychosis

• +4 to your spell save dc
• MD increases to 1d8, replenish on 1-4
• Megalomaniacal plot: You are now utterly convinced of some grand plot/scheme/conspiracy/purpose/destiny that you are deeply embroiled in. The wackier the better.
• You can force spells into the minds of others using touch
• Call of the Infinite Labyrinth: Roll an effect on the "Effects" table in Veins of the Earth
• Roll 1d20 on each symptom; on a 1, you gain that symptom (do this every time you prompt spell psychosis. Symptoms gained will not be lost as long as you have continuous psychosis)
1. a hallucination (type determined on roll)
2. a delusion (type determined on roll)
3. mania
4. depression
5. OCD
6. body dysmorphia
7. dysphoria
8. dEr0 conspiracy (if the character has ever heard of dEr0)
9. feel no pain
10. pain sensitivity
11. inability to feel sexual desire
12. dependent personality
13. hoarding 
14. narcolepsy
15. kleptomania
16. feel no fear, cannot discern it
17. paranoia
18. prefrontal cortex disinhibition
19. temporal lobe personality
20. anhedonia
21. inability to feel touch sensations
22. psychopathy
23. extreme narcissism
24. spell junkie (if not already)
25. addictive personality
26. you gain wizard vision (if you haven't already)
27. you are awakened
28. inability to sleep
29. tremors
30. instinctive defiance
31. pyromania
32. selective mutism
33. amnesia (type determined on roll)
34. Explosive Epiphany: deal (1d4 exploding)d6 damage in a range of 1d4 exploding*10 feet 

Once you enter spell psychosis, you risk the PC becoming an NPC. You may continue using the PC, but (and your teammates) are subject to all the difficulties that come with the items above. If you ever decide the PC is too much to deal with, they become an NPC. If the party decides that the afflicted PC is not worth dealing with, but you do, make a cha saving throw to prevent the PC from falling into a stress induced psychotic episode and becoming an NPC. (Save may be dependent on symptoms; psychopathy gives a +4 to save, dependent personality gives -4 and so forth). 

Once you exit the conditions for spell psychosis, roll a 1d20 for EVERY SINGLE SYMPTOM you gained over the course of your psychosis. On a 1, that symptom is now permanent even outside of spell psychosis.