D&D: Race to the Temple of Storms

Race to the Temple of Storms is a short Dungeons & Dragons adventure balanced for a party of four PCs of fourth level.  I ran it for my kids on Friday last week in a little over ninety minutes.

Race to the Temple of Storms (PDF)

WdH1: The Fire-Breathing Elephant Expedition (Campaign Summary)

This is the third in a series of posts that collectively define an adventure module for the new (5th) edition of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) called "The Fire-Breathing Elephant Expedition".  The module is set in Wanderhaven, the homebrew campaign setting in which my kids and I play and in which I set my book, Sneakatara Boatman and the Priest of Loki.  It's meant to bridge the gap from "The Lost Mine of Phandelver" in the D&D Starter Set to the forthcoming adventure The Rise of Tiamat.  As such, it's a short campaign, taking the Player-Characters (PCs) from mid-5th to 7th level.

This post makes use of the following previous posts:

• Wanderhaven Sourcebook: The Fire-Breathing Elephant
• WdH1: The Fire-Breathing Elephant Expedition (Introduction)
• D&D Homebrew: Cavalry Subclasses
• WdH1: The Fire-Breathing Elephant Expedition (Duke Wallace Foghorn IV)

Today we go through the Campaign Summary.

Wanderhaven & the Ten "Honest Houses"

Wanderhaven is the capital city and primary port of the Kingdom of the Western Isles, which is itself a sub-continental archipelago northeast of the continent of Sentralia.  The city was founded in ancient days by continental traders seeking a safe port from storms on their way to what were once far-flung destinations around the rest of the continent.  Wanderhaven has a large natural harbor called Great Island Bay, and in time what was once a way-station became a trading metropolis.  

Legend has it that life in the city was once lawless, brutal, and deadly.  Before the founding of the city proper, pirates operated freely in the hinterlands of the Isles, plaguing honest merchants and making travel along the future Kingdom’s best trade routes dangerous in the extreme.  The ten Honest Houses put a stop to that by banding together to incorporate the city, establish the rule of law, and -- eventually -- found the Kingdom of the Western Isles.  

Peace and prosperity have reigned ever since.

Dungeons & Dragons: Priests of Chaos

I’ve been mulling the idea of putting together a Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook for Wanderhaven, the campaign setting I use in my home game and in which I’ve set my book, Sneakatara Boatman and the Priest of Loki.  I’m not looking to publish the thing.  First, because I don’t know what the rules about that are, and second, because I can’t see that there’d be enough interest in it to go through the ordeal of writing and rewriting a giant, monster-sized project like that.  But I like working on it, and it takes no special effort to collect the pieces and save them here on the blog.  Eventually I’d like to reorganize the blog’s Wanderhaven section to include both the sourcebook material and The Priest of Loki’s preview chapters.

D&D Homebrew: Cavalry Subclasses

I was big fan of 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but I always felt that it’s biggest shortcoming was the way that it modeled--or rather, failed to model--mounted combat.  You had to take the Mounted Combat feat if you wanted play a knight or some kind of cavalryman, and that feat’s benefits were strictly limited compared to other feats, particularly those related to your Character’s race or class.  None of the classes in 4e had a build that particularly favored mounted combat, not even the Paladin, which has traditionally had Celestial Charger as one of its iconic class features.  I even tried setting up a mounted campaign for my gaming group, but it just didn’t work.  The group felt there were better ways to move through the campaign-world than by horseback, and they didn’t see the advantages of trying to optimize their characters for combat on horseback.  I tried upping the ante, adding high fantasy concepts to the game like griffins and riding sharks, but we never achieved the feel I was looking for, and after a while, I quit trying.

Dungeons & Dragons Homebrew: The Sapper

We started this project a few months ago as a way of developing viable versions of the Combat Engineer archetype for D&D Next.  My first cut was a full class structure that combined some of the elements of the Rogue and the Fighter with an Alchemy skill set in an attempt to produce a well-rounded, Strength and Intelligence-base heavy melee combatant.  

I stipulated, though, that I thought the class would work better as a set of sub-classes of existing classes, i.e. Combat Engineer (Fighter), Sapper (Rogue), and Alchemical Engineer (Wizard).  Two weeks ago, I finally put together a prototype of the Combat Engineer subclass, and most folks seem to agree that, yes, the subclass concept worked a little better.

Now it’s time to look at the Sapper (Rogue).

D&D Next Homebrew: The Combat Engineer Subclass

A few months ago, I put up a homebrewed Engineer class for D&D Next.  I was really surprised by the size of the response I got.  I thought the idea was both wacky and of interest to a very specific niche of players, but folks really responded, with feedback that was overwhelmingly positive and at times surprisingly specific.  I personally look on these articles as—at best—interesting experiments that analyze aspects of the game that I personally think could use a little expanding, but I got the idea that some folks were ready to start playing my version of the Engineer right then and there.  That was cool.

At the time of the article, though, I stipulated that I thought a better way to manage the same concepts was via subclasses of the Fighter, the Rogue, and maybe the Wizard, though that seemed a less challenging, less all-encompassing task, which is why I wrote the article the way that I did.  But.  Again folks surprised me, wanting to see the sub-class variations written out fully—and whether or not they’d make more sense.

It’s been months, but I’ve finally finished drafting my novel, so now I actually have a little time to put towards this crazy project.  With that in mind, here goes…

We’ll start with the Fighter.

The Engineer Class: A D&D Next Design Experiment (Part 2)

This is my first time trying to design a class for any version of D&D, so go easy on me.  Also, if you missed Part 1 of this experiment, it's here.

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Engineers are the brains of the outfit--capable combatants who know how to get things done.  They rely on a combination of their own fighting prowess and invention.  They succeed by using hasty or deliberate obstacles and traps to shape the battlefield and force their enemies to go in a direction that best benefits the Engineer’s allies, and when that doesn’t work, they fall back on their knowledge of alchemical concoctions or the simple strength of their sword arms.

Play an Engineer if you want to be a tough, capable jack-of-all-trades, a person who knows a little of everything who can therefore adapt to almost any situation.