Thursday, September 19th

The Daily Report

Yesterday kind of sucked. Not only did the temperature exceed 90 degrees, but the A/C wasn't even running downstairs... something I didn't figure out until really late in the day, leaving a hot and crabby mess during the afternoon.

The best thing that can be said for the day is that the stuff relating to moving is still on track. I completed a decent amount of THE HOLLOWING in the morning before it got too hot. My housemate's time off was confirmed last week (it had been confirmed before, but then she got a better job) and so I was able to purchase her return ticket last night.

Actually, maybe the best thing I can say for yesterday is that it's likely to be the last 90+ degree day that I have to be here for. The hottest day on the 10 day forecast now is next Wednesday, at a mere 80 degrees, and as of the first week in October I'm going to be completely done with the attic.

The State of the Me

It was still 80 degrees in here around midnight, so I've had approximately no sleep. Today's not just cooler but cloudy, which makes it easier to keep the attic cool. There's a good chance I'll end up sleeping pretty soon.

Plans For Today

No idea what's actually going to happen today. I hope to get writing done in the afternoon. I have both a bonus story and a regular chapter started, my loose plan is to see which one's biting harder and finish it.

AWW: Couple of sneak peeks!

Okay, I haven't had the time or energy to do any of these in a while, so here's a two-fer: Goblins and Kobolds. I believe a previous draft of Goblin (where they had the ability to imitate plants, which has now been relegated to their cousins, Trolls) was present in the version of the BCG that went up last spring. Kobolds were discussed in this post.

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GOBLIN
Basic Abilities
[A] Goblin Heritage: You can take Goblin and Ogad Folk Details as background details. You can choose details from the Beast Features category, though you do not have any extra ones. You can also "turn off" any Beast Features you choose at will, as they are actually alterations you've learned to make to your form. This does not apply to Beast Features gained through other qualities. You have the Inorganic Life and Dark Eyes Special Natures for free.

[B] Goblin Camouflage: You can alter the color and texture of your skin and alter your facial features, though duplicating exact details are difficult. This allows you to use the better of Stealth, Deception, or Magic for checks made to hide your presence visually, or to hide your identity, or impersonate someone else visually. As long as you're motionless, you can hide anywhere regardless of cover. With a little concentration, you can communicate with someone in writing by making words appear on your skin. From level 1, you can add half your level to these checks.
Standard Abilities
Malleable Form: You can add your level to any check to escape from bonds or a hold, to wriggle through or out of a tight space, to avoid damage from falling or impact from a heavy object, to reach an object, or to climb. You can stretch any or all of your limbs by one inch per level, and can alter your height up or down by one inch per level.

Goblin Resilience: You have resistance to wounding effects equal to your level. Subtract your level from the physical damage you suffer in a scene before figuring Wound Points. Subtract your level from your Wound Points before figuring Fight Points for a scene. When you're conscious, add your level to any Healing Check to aid you.

Sproinginess: You take no damage from most falls or similar impacts (including slam effects). When you suffer knockback, you can at your option halve or double the distance that you travel. If you double it, you can move the normal distance and then change direction, even if the attacker directed the knockback. You can aid your own check for jumping or racing someone by making another jump check, with no penalty for aiding yourself.

Visual Mimic: You can add half your level to checks to comprehend languages when you are speaking with someone and you can both see each other. If you're communicating visually (through signs or writing), you can add your full level.

Advanced Abilities
Level 2 Alter Size: Once per adventure, you can double your base size and the range of your ability to alter your size with Malleable Form. This lasts as long as you desire, as long as you remain conscious, and can be maintained for multiple scenes. At levels 4 and 6, you gain an additional use of this ability. Note that if you are already a notably different size from an ordinary Goblin, you can choose a different end result from this size-change, such as a Giant Goblin becoming Human-sized or Goblin-sized, but you must choose one "target size" and keep it.

Level 4 Pseudopod: You can sprout an additional limb at will. This functions as an arm, but it cannot make Dexterity Checks or other fine manipulations, or it can take the place of a leg that has been disabled. The pseudopod can reach twice as far as your normal limbs can. At levels 5 and 6, you gain an additional pseudopod.

Level 6 Biological Rejiggering: You can make Healing Checks to affect yourself using Toughness, Magic, or Mind, and can do so once per round as an extra action for shaking off a condition, or as an action to patch yourself up. When someone rolls a 6 against you with their first die for a physical attack, they must immediately re-roll that die and use the second result. If it's a 6 again, it remains a 6.

KOBOLD
Basic Abilities
[A] Kobold Heritage: You can take Kobold and Ogad Folk details as background details. Add a +3 bonus to any check related to digging or tunneling or shifting dirt or rubble, including breaking through earth or stone barriers. Double the speed for completing such a task (or halve the time). You are immune to any effect that would transmute your body to stone or other inanimate minerals. You have the Inorganic Life and Dark Eyes details for free.

[B] Stone Fist: Your unarmed attacks are not weak (+2 damage if they aren't weak for another reason), you can parry barehanded without risk. Your hands are considered a heavy weapon. You can buy additional traits for them as if they were gauntlets.
Standard Abilities
Stone Hide: You have Physical Damage Resistance and resistance to wounding effects and a bonus to withstand equal to your level. If you successfully withstand an unarmed attack or parry it with your hand, your attacker takes physical damage equal to your level.

Sculpt Features: You can alter your appearance, including the texture and color of your skin though you always appear like some kind of stone to close inspection. You can add a level bonus to Deception Checks against organic folk to imitate another Kobold or stone being, but no bonus or penalty otherwise. You can rearrange the location of your facial features and body parts at will, allowing you to actually change where they connect to your body. This allows you to add a die to any attempt to escape from bonds or entanglement, or any climbing check. Shuffling a limb or sensory organ counts as an action in combat, though you can "unscramble" everything as a single action. You can have Beast Features, and though you don't get any extra ones for free, you can turn them on and off if they weren't gained from another quality.

Stone Hiding: When hiding in a stone environment, you can add your level bonus to any Stealth Check and can use Toughness in place of Stealth for such purposes. You can also assume the form of a rock or stone statue of your general size/shape. Unless someone is looking for a Kobold, they will probably overlook you without a check, and you can add your full level bonus plus a die roll to any Deception Check or Stealth Check to hide or pass yourself off as inanimate object or part of the scenery. You cannot move while in stone form, but you get double your Physical Damage Resistance from Stone Hide.
Advanced Abilities
Level 2 Chip Off The Old Block: You can make ranged attacks using shards of stone from your body. Treat this as a ranged weapon that requires no hands to use. You can buy additional traits for this weapon as normal.

Level 4 Gather No Moss: Once per round when you make an unarmed attack against a single enemy, you can use a movement bonus instead of a movement penalty and add 1D to your running speed. If you're attacking for damage or for knock effects, the bonus applies to result as well. Increase the result bonus by 2 for each additional level.

Level 6 Metamorphic Rock: Once per scene when you're in contact with stone or earth of about eight times your mass, you can absorb it into yourself. This allows you to up to double your size, though in this state it takes an action to walk, a focused action to climb, and you cannot run or jump or swim. You gain Physical Damage Resistance and resistance to all physical effects equal to your Toughness and can add your Toughness to any Strength Check and to the damage of any close physical attack. You can end this effect with an action, which can be combined with a simultaneous unarmed attack using Strength or Toughness against all enemies who are close to you as the extra rock explodes outwards from your form. Using this ability or ending it ends all physical conditions on you, and you do not accumulate physical damage while it's active (though you still lose Fight Points from it).

Additionally, once per adventure, you can absorb stone or earth of about half your mass to heal all physical damage and Wound Points you have suffered. This requires a focused action during a fight scene. You can heal yourself completely for free between adventures.

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"Ogad" is the name given to to the order of life that Goblins, Kobolds, Pucks, Trolls, and Ogres belong to... originally I was going to have Goblins as a sort of "base" and the others be things they could grow into using Advanced Qualities, but I decided that the concept would work better if there were multiple base types. It took me a long time to come up with a generic term for all of them... I almost gave up "Goblin" as a distinct folk type, but then I settled on "Ogad". Browsers of TvTropes might be able to puzzle out that it started life as an acronym, though in the game world it's just a word.

Ogad (with the exception of Ogres, who were artificially created or force-grown to be bigger than and resemble Humans) are mostly diminutive creatures of about two and a half feet tall. They differ from other folk in that they're more homogeneous, not having bones or many organs or much internal differentiation. They're all shape-shifters after a fashion. Most of them are patterned after a particular type of life or matter: Kobolds are mineral, Trolls are vegetable, Pucks are animal, and Goblins are polyps (the zoological kind, not the oncological kind). Kobolds and Goblins will definitely be in the basic set. Ogres may well be. I'm on the fence about trying to fit the others in or not. There are also more esoterically patterned Ogad (Bugbears or Bogarts = dreams, Gremlins = magic) that probably will wait for an Ogad-themed booklet.

The Goblin's shapeshifting abilities have been beefed up a little even as they've shed some of their abilities to their cousins. Before, you would need to max out Goblin and get an Advanced Quality to successfully imitate larger folk without something like a stool and a counter to hide your lower body, but now you can get that with a second level ability.

I haven't made a lot of progress on the BCG since those consecutive weeks I spent at my parents' house in a row. I haven't had the time or energy. It's more been small refinements. But I did make a lot of progress during that time.

AWW: Since I didn't accomplish anything else today...

...with the heat and the sleep deprivation, here's another sneak peek while I wait for my room to cool down since I foolishly didn't set the window fan on intake earlier.

This is Nature-Touched. Like the other "Divinely Touched" CQs, it's intended to be a more cleric-flavored form of supernatural superpower than the *omancers are, hence it's a list of things you can do that are long on blessing and protection and with no mention of Spell Checks.

This one is particularly meant to be druid-like. Basically, I thought of all the things that strike me as iconic druid spells/abilities from D&D. Now, I know as soon as I say that, the post-AD&D generation is going to get completely the wrong image. The thing is, druids didn't use to be all about shapeshifting. In AD&D, that was like the ultimate culmination of what they could do, and it was limited: like, once a day a piece, they could be an ordinary bird, a mammal, or a reptile. Their main schtick was "nature clerics". They were actually included in the PHB as an example of the sort of thing you would do for a variant cleric that followed a drastically different model than the templar-inspired warrior-priest that was used for the cleric.

In 3rd edition, the shapeshifting became a lot more flexible, and due to the power creep associated with it, it went from being their ultimate thing to their primary thing, and in 4E, it just plain became their thing.

But if you go back to 2nd Edition or even just looking at the spells that populate their list in 3E, you'll see the basic idea I was going for.

And here we come to the point of AWW's plug-and-play character building: I can describe what a druid character is to me, and you can describe what a druid character is to you, and we can both make our characters and they'll be recognizably what we were talking about. (In theory. I don't actually have a freeform animal shapeshifter in yet.)

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NATURE-TOUCHED
Basic Abilities
[A] Natural Harmony: You are immune to natural diseases and natural poisons in their original state (for example, you could eat poison berries or handle poisonous frogs, but would not be immune to poison extracted from those sources) . Animals and predatory plants (including plant beasts) will not attack you if not under the direction of an intelligent force, unless you attack them or provoke them. From level 1, one other person per level can share in these benefits if they travel with you.

[A] Blessing of Oak and Hide: By touching one weapon, shield, or armor made primarily or entirely of wood, cloth, leather, or other organic materials, you can impart a blessing to it until the end of the scene, or until you rescind it. At levels 1, 3, and 5, you can give one more blessing at a time. Weapons gain a +1 bonus to attack and parry, shields have their Block score and defensive bonuses both increased by 1, and armor has its passive damage resistance increased by 2. If the item can take traits, you can give it 1 GP worth of traits. Blessing an item more than once gives one more GP only.
Standard Abilities
Cornucopia: You can find or produce food in the wild, including edible plants and if desired, unfertilized eggs, and milk from local animals, or meat, though if you gain meat through this ability then local animals will no longer be peaceful as described under Natural Harmony for the remainder of the adventure. You can feed a whole party indefinitely using this ability. Additionally, during an adventure you can gain items made of wood or plant material (including weapons, clothes, and herbal items, but not written materials unless it's a duplicate of something that's on hand) worth 1 GP per level.

Natural Helper: You have 1 GP per level that can be used to summon minor animal companions of types that would be found in the area. You can converse with these animal companions as if you shared a language and they had the intellect trait.

Wild Growth: Outdoors, you can cause vegetation to grow wild, increasing the cover of the immediate area by one level for the duration of a battle scene. If existing cover is mostly from vegetation, you can also decrease it by one level. By taking a focused action, you can cause both effects to apply for the round selectively, increasing cover for your allies and decreasing it for your enemies. Indoors, you can turn an area of no cover or sparse cover into an area of sparse or abundant cover, which also has the effect of making it count as an outdoor area for any ability that depends on vegetation or a natural environment in general.

Animalistic Transformation: You can give yourself or a willing target you can touch a Beast Feature that could relate to a natural animal. You can give one feature for every level of experience, either to the same person or to multiple people. They last until the end of the scene, or until you or the recipient wills them to end.

Bless Food: Once per level per adventure, you can bless a piece of food. The person who eats it is instantly refreshed as if they had a full night's sleep and have been adequately nourished, and can ignore half their Wound Points or gain Fight Points equal to your level during the next fight scene they participate in.
Advanced Abilities
Level 2 Natural Rejuvenation: Each person who eats your blessed food loses one die of Wound Points, once per adventure per person. Between adventures, you and your allies can all heal one die of Wound Points for free.

Level 4 Hamper Movement: You can cause insects, plant growth, or similar natural hazards to hamper enemies' movements. By taking an action, you can cut the run speed of one enemy in half. By taking a focused action, you can prevent one enemy from running and require an action for them to walk, or you can cut the run speed of all enemies in half. If the enemy can fly, they cannot be slowed by this ability, but instead must spend an action every round to remain airborne, or focused action if you are using a focused action against them alone. These effects of this ability require no check, but they only take effect at the end of the round and remain for the following one.

Level 6 Natural Guardian: Once per adventure, you can summon an animal, plant beast, or animal-like beast companion worth 6 Gear Points. This companion has the combat companion trait for free, though it only remains for one scene.
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There's strong synergy between this CQ and the Primal Empath one, since the Primal Empath can boost the summonings that are possible with this ability to do things like make them combat capable or allow them to share senses. To me, Primal Empath/Nature-Touched or Green Mage/Nature-Touched would be the perfect iconic druid. But, again, that's me coming at it from a perspective where druids weren't primarily shapeshifters.