Sean K Reynolds's page

Wow, that guy is fat!

Ahh. Well, let's just say that there are a LOT of problems with the DMG 3.5 (FYI, the lead designer for that book was one of the people laid off in the same sweep that hit me and several others that year, and the book was given to one or more people to finish and there are a lot of goofs in it because of that ... for example, the text that says prestige classes don't give a multiclassing XP penalty is gone, errata for the 3.0 DMG is not incorporated into the book and it uses the unmodified 3.0 text, etc.) so I'd just ignore that as another error.

Heh, you're right. I got those dates mixed up. I don't have a copy of the WOG Folio handy, so I can't check to see if the Raxivort entry is in there. :P

Xvarts have always had a weird role in D&D. They didn't appear in a hardback book until the 1e Fiend Folio, yet Raxivort (their god) is fully detailed in the 1e World of Greyhawk box set, so there's a bit of delay for the general public knowing what the heck Rax is god _of_.

Personally, I think of xvarts as unique humanoids for three reasons.

One, they're entirely unrelated to the whole orc/orog/half-ogre/ogre/losel grouping (they don't have the orc subtype).
Two, they're entirely outside the goblinoid hierarchy (they don't have the gob subtype).
Three, they're not at all reptilian and thus don't have the kobold association (they don't have the reptilian subtype).

Also, because of their connection to rats, wererats, bats, and werebats, we end up with the following humanoid/animal groupings.

Orc/boars
Goblins/wolves, dire wolves, wargs
Kobolds/reptiles and dragons
Xvarts/rats, bats, dire rats and bats, wererats and bats

A creature's choice of pets help define the variety of encounters you may get with them. With xvarts, the rat/bat connection means they're a shoe-in to live in sewers, especially with their lycanthrope leaders.

The creature alternately called the "Greyhawk dragon" and "steel dragon" originally was called the "Greyhawk dragon" and appeared in a Greyhawk product. When they collected monsters from all over for the 2E Monstrous Manual, they changed the name to "steel dragon" so it wouldn't have a world-specific name. Since its time as a Core-D&D monster, it has been used in the Forgotten Realms, so you'll see the "steel dragon" name used in Core D&D and in FR, but when in a Greyhawk product or article you'll (properly) see it called by its right name.

{It is my understanding that skill points are gained retroactively if one bumps Intelligence.}

It would certainly be easier if that were the case, but the PH and SRD say otherwise (see PH page 10, very last sentence of the very last paragraph in the right column above the sidebar).

{If you use the sample NPCs in the DMG as a guide you see this is the case.}

Which sample NPCs are you referring to?

{Additionally, E-tools uses this same method.}

E-tools is wrong. :)
It's really easy to program retroactive skill points, hard to program them as "from this point onward..." because that requires keeping track of at what character level you took that class level and most programmers don't want to bother with that. ;) I acknowledge this in my program, and go out of my way to avoid giving level-based Int bonuses for that reason. :)

{AFAIK (and I have looked for it) there isn't any place where it says that you only gain skill points for the boost AFTER the boost. All the rules say on the subject is that a character's skill points at each level are based on Intelligence.}

Oh, I don't think anyone is arguing that if your Int goes from 11 to 12 at level 4 that you have to wait until level 5 before you get the extra skill point from your new Int bonus; the point under discussion is whether or not you are supposed to get that extra point for levels 1, 2, and 3 as well (and the rules say you aren't supposed to).

OK, I'm a bit limited here because I don't have a print version of the issue so I don't know how it all turned out, I can just compare it to what I turned over.

1. My bad. I wrote a stat block generator a few years ago and I'm continually updating it and catching bugs and such, unfortunately I had a major computer crash in Sept and I haven't been able to recover the data from the old computer yet, so I'm using an archived version from February that doesn't have all of the most recent fixes (such as full integration of the class features), and still uses some 3.0 terminology. This is one of them. Sorry about that.

2. See point #1.

3. It's correct in my turnover; I blame the French judge. (Sorry, Olympics ice skating joke.)

4. It's correct in my turnover (I put his 4th-level bonus into Wis to avoid the Int-increase-effect-on-skills problem that's a big pain to workaround in my software). Again, I blame the French judge.

5. My bad, I didn't even put the DCs into the stat block (and I have no excuse ... my software has the ability to calculate all of those DCs if I actually enter them in the SLA section rather than the "doesn't fit any category" custom entry).

I'll look into this when I get back from running errands this morning.

well, there are only 3 settings involved

So far.

The article ran REALLY long, and there are some monsters left over, and I'm hoping we'll continue to convert some of these babies.

He is a minor Aerdy noble, though.

The writeup, like all template writeups, includes a sample creature, but he's not anyone of note in the hierarchy of the Great Kingdom, he's a guy I created.

They're more like liches than anything else -- they get a few defenses and a few powers that augment their ability to dominate and abuse the people around them, but nothing gross like ghoul stength, no mindlessness like a zombie or skeleton, etc.

I wrote them up for 3.0 in the Living Greyhawk Journal, the article is my 3.5 conversion of them (and other creatures).

Lycanthropy does not work like other diseases, yet Paladins are immune due to Divine Health.[/i].

Edit: I had to edit my post because I was using the SRD, and the SRD doesn't specifically mention that a paladin is immune to lycanthropy, but the PH does. Weird.

Anyway, it's actually debatable whether paladins _should be_ immune to lycanthropy. There's plenty of evidence that lycanthropy is a curse, _not_ a disease, and paladins shouldn't be immune to curses.

yes but very unusual vermin, in that they die after 6 seconds exposed to air..I don't know any worm that does that in real life...

Roundworms, the kind for which you get your dog or cat "de-wormed," quickly die in air (not surprising, as they're technically an "aquatic" creature).

Cool. :)

I wrote up a monster called a kerexoloth:

http://www.seankreynolds.com/skrg/free/motm/motm4_kerexoloth.html

One of its hooks is that it likes to learn the truenames of other creatures, and once it has done so it gets bonuses against that creature (such as a bonus to DCs).

Maybe you should put up a little gallery of additional angles of the minis, or the 360-degree spin animations that WizKids and Privateer Press do with their minis? The minis look very nice, and the photos you have are nice, and perhaps being able to look at the painted version from more sides might help.

They're also sort of buried relative to the main page. I had to click "Paizo Products," then "By Brand" before I even saw the GameMastery link.

It's even worse if I click "By Product Type" instead of "By Brand" as I then have to click an additional link ("Roleplaying Products") to get to the GameMastery link.

It wouldn't hurt to put a more permanent link on the main page about it, even though the main page is already very busy (it probably showed up on the Store Blog section but have been bumped by the 15 new listings there since the VotWT went on sale on Oct 21).

Hmm, your link didn't work for me, but I was able to find what you're talking about:
http://tinyurl.com/dve5q

I don't really like 'em. I think they're too long, unnecessarily break stuff out into separate categories (combat gear vs. non-combat ... do you repeat the combat gear in the non-combat section? why not just use one line and list the combat stuff first?). Do I really need what languages the creature speaks at the top? I don't like how it doesn't differentiate between attack and full attack for melee & ranged. It unnecessarily breaks out into separate categories stuff that was combined earlier (base attack/grapple becomes base attack, grapple ... space/reach becomes space, reach). The highest-level spells at the top is wacky (I understand the reason for it, but is it that hard to look at the bottom of the list?). Feats and skills on different lines? BAH! :)

IMO a stat block should be set up to be the most efficient use of space and time in a combat situation because that's where the game is running the slowest and any delays are critical; in a roleplaying situation it's okay if I take an extra few seconds to look up a non-combat ability in a later part of the stat block. If I'm running a roleplaying encounter I probably have to look up the character's motivations and stuff anyway, I don't need noncombat-critical info up front. Heck, the creature's hit points are on the NINTH line of the stat block (perhaps sixth or even fifth if the stat block doesn't have the gender/race/class/level, source, aura, and languages lines). HMPH!

But I just do what I'm told. :)

I talk about this some in my new book Curse of the Moon, by the way -- how to handle alignment issues for acting according to your lycanthrope form's alignment.

By the way, I found a Todd McFarlane figure of a giant ape-creature that would be cool for one of the monsters in this adventure, if you're not into painting minis:

http://www.spawn.com/toys/product.aspx?product=2586

By the way, you can't give the spawn regeneration instead of fast healing; regen makes all damage the creature takes (with the exception of the damage it's especially vulnerable to) nonlethal damage, and undead are immune to nonlethal damage, so....

Yeah, the otyugh and the harpies are in there for some variety (it does get boring to have 10 rooms of the same rooms of the same creature over and over, with the only difference being the numbers of creatures or their class levels, and there's only so much you can fiddle with the environment and tactics when your "dungeon" is the root network of a cluster of trees), and the harpies in particular are an homage to the older GH product's swamp adventure.

{Pssst Erik Mona: any chance of getting Sean to write a Scarlet Brotherhood-themed scenario?}

That'd be cool, fantasy-racism "old school." :)

Sorry, I've been doing intense Gen Con prep and neglected to come back to these boards.

I basically hit the word count limit for the adventure. I had to spend a lot on the hard details of things and the roleplaying stuff (which also depends a lot on the nature of the PCs) didn't get as much space ... but that's also the sort of thing that needs a DM's touch to tune it to their specific party.

Tatterdemalion wrote:

Just throwing in two cents: a real-life black widow certainly does no damage with its bite, but the poison still gets injected.

Ditto for a syringe...oops, that's another thread. ;)

Heh heh heh....

So yeah, even using the Phil Athans Rule you should apply special effects to attack damage. For example, you can still catch "cat scratch fever" from a cat scratch even though the attack does only nonlethal damage in D&D.

Folks, I'm glad you're liking the adventure. To be absolutely honest, almost all of the stuff you're digging in the adventure was stuff already in the AoW outline they gave me, so Erik, James, and company deserve most of the kudos (though I came up with the worm-in-the-potion and the slow infection stuff). So the specific implementation is mine, but they get credit for coming up with the cool ideas. :)

So, did these worms show up two years ago or ten years ago?

In my manuscript all the references are "two years." Perhaps they were fiddling with the timeline and decided to go back to the original and missed one of the references.

BTW I don't have my author copies yet so I can't compare anything to printed version at this time.

Later on in the stat blocks they list only 28 mook lizards and two tougher leader types. This seems to confirm the 30 lizardfolk idea, but I was just wondering if the missing 10 matter.

That's my fault; all of my final calculations were for _six_ groups, but for some reason I left the intro text as _eight_ groups (I think I may have originally planned for eight groups, but the CRs/ELs of the siege ended up too high for the PCs involved, and I reduced it to six so the PCs wouldn't be killed outright). So (as James said) there never were 40 liz, just 30.

And as for the Kyuss spawn, yes, the damage from an attack can never be reduced below 1 points by a modifier, so unless the critters get a bull's strength spell cast on them they're pretty much limited to 1 point of damage plus poison. Note that I created a variant rule for that situation:
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/philathansrule.html

IIRC Steve Miller created the cult of the Green Lady just for The Doomgrinder, and purposefully left it enigmatic as to whether or not they actually have any divine backing or were just a bunch of self-deceived people. There probably isn't any more "official" information out there about the cult.

Hey, folks. Our cat got really sick last week and I have some big medical bills for her, so I started some auctions to cover those bills. They include some D&D stuff (1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition) and (relevant to here) most of the monster & NPC minis I used when I ran the playtest for Lost Temple of Demogorgon (issue #120). Here's the link:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZskreyn

Good catch, Rikkus. IP has a very unusual radius, otherwise it wouldn't be an issue.

Interesting idea on using Planar Ally. The only drawback to that is the 10 minute casting time; Tellax needs a bit of a head start on that one. But good thinking using the Aspect of Demogorgon mini ... one of the reasonsI put the golem in the adventure was because I wanted to use my Demonic Lasher mini from Reaper -- in fact, several creatures are in there based on minis I have, here's a link to a thread on my boards about it:

http://tinyurl.com/6rray

Heh!

Given the scale of what they're painting, I don't think it would take THAT much skill to get a Large stone golem to look reasonably detailed. Compared to, say, a 35mm miniature. :P

When I wrote it I had a max word count of 15,000 words, and if I broke that, Erik would kill me _and_ my character. ;) With all of the spellcasters involved in the adventure, that meant big stat blocks that ate up a lot of word count, so I didn't have anything to spare to cover more about Irongate. Plus the adventure wasn't really in Irongate; if it was, I'd certainly write more info on it (you're talking to the guy that is partially responsible for making the 2E Slavers and Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff adventures more like sourcebooks than straightforward adventures.

Glad you liked the adventure. And you know, who's to say that the cover illo isn't of the stone golem from the temple area...?

Thanks, Sam, I appreciate that, especially coming from you and your WOG expertise.

Troto -

Glad you liked the adventure. :)
You could also attribute some of the level loss compared to his old stats to be the result of the dread forge draining out some of his Demogorgon-initiated power.