Johann Weiss's page

I believe Roll for Combat are going to have rules for monster parts staves in their new bestiary, Battlezoo: Strange and Unusual.

Well that's perfectly timed. I had kickstarted the Eldamon but opted out of the "Year of Monster" and "Strange and Unusual". KS update says Strange and Unusual is supposed to release this month, so I can just grab it then. I couldn't find any mention specifically of Staves in it, but it sounds like it has more of everything, so regardless I'd be picking it up.

Thanks!

Running a game fully using the battlezoo monster parts system and we just reached level 5. One of my players pointed out the items you can make are very slanted towards martials, with only Perception and Skill items useful to casters. It's not game breaking but I did notice that Staves are completely absent.

Wands roughly approximate to a Skill item with the Spell imbuement (it's marginally more expensive but it gives a skill bonus which a wand wouldn't).

I thought a weapon with the Magic imbued path would be similar to a Stave but it's much worse and way more expensive. 1000gp Fire Weapon on Magic track gets you Flaming Sphere (lvl 2), Fireball (lvl 3), and Produce Flames (cantrip). Both levelled spells are once per day.

Compared to a Greater staff of Evocation which costs 900gp. You get Ray of Frost (cantrip), magic missile (lvl 1), shocking grasp (lvl 1), Acid Arrow (lvl 2), glitterdust (lvl 2), lightning Bolt (lvl 3), magic missile (lvl 3), fireball (lvl 4), weapon storm (lvl 4). Admittedly, your limited to the number of charges you imbue the staff with during preparation, but it's going to be at least 4 charges by the time you should have gotten it.

I know it's sorta apples to oranges since the Fire imbued weapon is also a +2 striking weapon, but for a caster that's usually pointless.

Long story, still kinda long... I'm thinking of adding a Battlezoo equivalent to a staff, using the standard staff cost as a benchmark. Would appreciate any feedback if someone else has thoughts or has tried this. I'll also post an update at some point when I've got costing worked out in case anyone runs into this issue in the future and wants to copy my solution.

I love that you did this! Thanks for all the details on what you changed and / or adapted. Did you serve any foods with the pastries? I would be tempted to do a leafy fruit salad and claim it was from Bhopan.

We did a themed food night years ago for a sea campaign, making recipes that might have been served shipboard at an Admiral's table, along with some of traditional sailor dishes -- which when fresh are actually okay. Fortunately we did not go too realistic!

My creative energies were tapped out so I just told the players to bring some extra food potluck style. We ended up with plenty to eat but not with any other fun themed elements.

If I were to do any actual traditional cooking based on old recipes, I'd want to test it in a smaller quantity beforehand. It's too wasteful to make a large amount of a dish and then realize no one is going to want to eat it. That being said, there's some good youtubers who make ancient recipes and give reviews, which allows you to skip that step and trust their judgement. A great example is Tasting History

I got the Lost Omens Travel Guide just after release and wanted to run one of my games as a festival day. So me and my players did an Ascension Day feast while playing a session. We made all 4 cocktails and the Thuvian Spiced pastries.

TLDR; it was fun but some of the recipes required modifications (not coming down on the authors, I know it's not a real bar/cookbook).

The meat pastries turned out very good, but I heavily modified them. I don't know how the meat would cook properly in the same time as the pastry dough, not to mention all the fat released would make them soggy. So I precooked the ground lamb before assembly. I also upped the amount of mint/parsley, added a bit pf peas for extra veg, and some small hot chilis. Assembly was way harder than I thought it would be, so if you want them to look nice, you'll need some experience making dumplings. There was also a lot of extra filling but it was tasty so easy to use elsewhere.

Anishani Tonic is basically a sour absinthe drink. It's good, but pretty obvious what it'll taste like. Sugar should be simple syrup to help it dissolve or it needs to be shaken maybe?

Carpenden Twist was a very extreme flavour as written. One teaspoon of almond extract for a drink is intense; only one of my players liked it. The rest we just put a very small amount of almond in, which turned out pretty good. Honestly I ended up adding almond extract to bubbled wine after this to finish the bottle. The sugar cube doesn't dissolve though, that's a weird instruction. Should just be a simple syrup if it needs sweet.

Fruit Cornucopia is a bunch of fruit with rum. It's good, exactly what you'd expect.

Spiked Mint Tea was the standout favorite. Wouldn't have thought of mint tea with whiskey but it's a good combo and the spiced simple syrup was a great addition. Definitely will make this again, outside of gaming.

Overall was a fun game playing out an in game party. Kept the action light but got to have a lot of NPC interaction while we also ate.

DM'ing Dead Suns (no spoilers) and I stumbled into a fun solution to something I thought I'd have to just hand wave and say "it happens because the rules say it happens".

Ship upgrading is tied to level and not money, for obvious reasons, but that means that the players upgrade the ship in a totally different fashion to buying equipment. Specific to this game, the are away from their ship for an extended period and then when they get back it's gotten better. Which would normally be really weird.

Accept in this case my players befriended a group of space goblins that felt indebted to them. They live on the ship but take no part in missions. So now the players pick the new stuff, but their characters technically have nothing to do with it. It's just the goblins tinkering away while the characters are adventuring.

Other campaigns could use a similar idea, just replacing the goblins with some other clear non-combative NPC, that lives on the ship.