Elementalist Spell: Command Elementals

I always felt Elementalists needed a little more help in D&D, so here's a basic spell for those folks to deal with, well, elementals.

Clever folk will notice that this is exactly the same spell as Command Undead, only for elementals. I have some notes on what I think about the spell below the picture in this post.

Command Elementals

Level: 1 to 6
Duration: One or more days
Range: 120'

This spell can be prepared in any level of spell slot, from 1 to 6. The higher the spell slot, the more powerful the effect.

The caster can attempt to control one or more elementals. Roll 2d6 on the Command Elemental table and compare to the HD of the targeted creature(s). If successful, roll 2d6 to determine the total HD of undead affected.

Affected elementals must obey the Elementalists every command if mindless. Intelligent elementals act as if as if under the command of a Charm Person spell. Intelligent elementals are aware of what is happening and may react accordingly once the spell wears off.

Subsequent castings of this spell override earlier ones, allowing Elementalists to wrest control of undead minions from one another.

Command Elementals (by HD)
Level	1	2	2*	3	4	5	6	7-9
1	7	9	11	-	-	-	-	-
2	+	7	9	11	-	-	-	-
3	+	+	+	9	11	-	-	-
4	+	+	+	7	9	11	-	-
5	+	+	+	+	7	9	11	-
6	+	+	+	+	+	7	9	11
* 2 HD monsters with special abilities
- cannot succeed
+ automatic success

Looks like some cute little fire elementals to me
(Jakub Rebelka)
(Who also did the sweet image at the top of the blog)

Like I said, it's an exact copy of my Command Undead spell from earlier this month.

With the Command Undead it's just giving Magic-Users the ability to turn undead at the cost of a spell slot. Probably not too crazy, especially in a game where I'm taking out Clerics (and Paladins).

Now, however, I'm expanding that same ability to elementals who've never been subjected to this sort of "turning" ability which is probably risky. On one hand, it explains the "elementalist Magic-User with elemental minions" dungeon very well, which is good. On the other hand, it potentially trivializes elementals as enemies - especially if the PCs know what to expect and go all in on these spells.

I can see some ways to take the edge off a bit - through roleplaying (the elementals aren't clever in their obedience), through additional saves (every time a command is given, perhaps), or simply by saying each new casting cancels the effect of previous castings. Alternately, perhaps, once an effected elemental makes a save it will be immune to the spell for some period.

Ultimately, whether it's a terrible spell or not probably depends on the campaign and the players. I think I'll give it a go and see how it turns out.

d100 Activity Table for Normal Humans

The d4 Caltrops blog has a brilliant series of d100 activity tables for each of the monsters in the OSE basic bestiary. Super useful stuff.

For a variety of reasons, the one for "Normal Humans" doesn't follow the standard template of "weird or cool or interesting things the creature is doing" but rather contains two tables - one for profession and another for mannerisms and peculiarities.

That's cool and all, and the tables have great utility no doubt... but I still want a d100 table for figuring out what a group of Normal Humans are up to when encountered randomly.

So I wrote one. Here it is:

I tried to follow the d4 Caltrops formatting, just because, but it's not a perfect match. I also tried to make most of the entries inviting some sort of action or response from the players.

Just normal humans doing normal human things.
(Hieronymus Bosch)

Necromancer Spell: Command Undead

Here's a Necromantic spell intended for OSE and other B/X related games.

Command Undead

Level: 1 to 6
Duration: One or more days
Range: 120'

This spell can be prepared in any level of spell slot, from 1 to 6. The higher the spell slot, the more powerful the effect.

The caster can attempt to control one or more undead creatures. Roll 2d6 on the Command Undead table and compare to the HD of the targeted creature(s). If successful, roll 2d6 to determine the total HD of undead affected.

Affected undead must obey the Necromancer's every command if mindless (e.g. skeltons or zombies). Intelligent undead act as if as if under the command of a Charm Person spell. Intelligent undead are aware of what is happening and may react accordingly once the spell wears off.

Subsequent castings of this spell override earlier ones, allowing Necromancers to wrest control of undead minions from one another.

Command Undead (by HD)
Level	1	2	2*	3	4	5	6	7-9
1	7	9	11	-	-	-	-	-
2	+	7	9	11	-	-	-	-
3	+	+	+	9	11	-	-	-
4	+	+	+	7	9	11	-	-
5	+	+	+	+	7	9	11	-
6	+	+	+	+	+	7	9	11
* 2 HD monsters with special abilities
- cannot succeed
+ automatic success

Might be useful to have Command Undead spell handy here.
(Russ Nicholson)

Observant... uhm... observers will note that this is basically the turn undead table for Clerics, only it takes a spell slot. Moreover it takes a level 6 spell slot to have the same impact as a level 6 Cleric.

That may seem a bit underwhelming comparatively speaking. On the other hand, it's kind of stepping on the Cleric's niche. On the third hand, for me, that's totally fine because my campaign doesn't have any Clerics.

Speaking of campaign specifics... in my campaign using Necromantic spells is Chaos aligned roughly 99% of the time. It's also the kind of thing where if you cast that spell even once, you'll be known as a "Necromancer" forever. It'll also not be trivially available, though of course if you find a Necromancer's spellbook....

Anyhow, I've always wanted a bit of an explanation for Magic-User lairs protected by Skeletons etc, and this is part of the rationale.

House Rule: Shields Shall Be Splintered! but are also a bit better

Part of the purpose of this blog is for me to make decisions on the house rules for my upcoming game and put them somewhere, so some of these posts are going to be restating (and probably tweaking) other people's excellent work. This is one such post.

Years ago Trollsmyth proposed a houserule called "Shields Shall Be Splintered". Here's my take on shields, drawing on that.

Shields provide +2 AC

Shields shall be splintered: when taking damage from a melee attack, a shield wielder can elect to have their shield be destroyed and not take the damage. This option is also available for magical shields, with the addition that magical shields can even ward against more esoteric things like lightning bolts, dragon breath, death rays, thrown boulders, and things like that. But the shield still breaks, so you better make sure it's worth it.

The shield stopped an arrow, which is pretty good.
(Morris Meredith Williams)

So yeah, +2 to AC is more than usual, but I think that'll make the decision to sacrifice the shield a bit more interesting. It may result in the party having retainers along carrying spare shields (shield-bearers as it were), but that's fine.

I probably will put some ways to pro-actively destroy shields in as well - maybe as some sort of weapon property of axes. But that's a future worry.

House Rule: Weather Table (for Simulacrum Overland)

The Simulacrum Overland system (discussed in this post) imposes a number of modifiers on travelling depending on the weather, so I've built myself a little d6 table for that.

Roll	Spring	Summer	Fall	Winter	Winter Temp
1	Poor *	Nice*	Poor*	Poor*	Extreme
2	Poor	Nice	Poor	Poor	As yesterday
3	Poor	Nice	As yesterday	Poor	As yesterday
4	Nice	Nice	Nice	As yesterday	As yesterday
5	Nice	Nice	Nice	Nice	Fine
6	Nice	Nice	Nice	Nice	Fine
*	Roll d6 again. If it comes up 1, there's a Major Storm

Poor Weather = +1 to exploration cost

Nice Weather = no change in cost

Extreme Temperature = +1 to exploration cost. Only rolled for in the winter.

Major Storm = additional +1 to exploration cost (this is not part of Simulacrum Overland, but I wanted the dramatic effect of a massive storm occasionally making everything all dramatic and inconvenient).

In addition, I've decided that unless roads are Roman quality or well maintained, they only reduce travel/ exploration cost by -1 in summer. The rest of the year they're deep tracks of mud - they'll help you find your route, but will be very slow going.

Wouldn't want to try to cross that stream in a heavy downpour
(Simeon Larson)

Notes

The table implies a temperate kind of climate. It doesn't get extremely warm even in summer but winters can get significantly cold (sometimes enough to impact travel) in the winter. I think I might make more weather tables for various regions to further differentiate regions, but this will do as a starting point.

Summer is obviously the best time to campaign and explore, while the other seasons are more dicey, which hits my preference for pseudo-historical RealLife(tm) flavour. Spring, on the other hand is both muddy and with unpredictable weather.

You'll also note that the table is not concerned with specifics of temperature or what exactly is going on to impede travel or what degree of rain counts as "Poor" vs "Nice". That's something I'll determine at the table, just like I'll interpret reaction roll results based on context.

Finally, I think I'll probably roll the weather a day or two in advance to give a bit of foreshadowing and possible allow appropriate PCs and NPCs a chance at predicting the weather where appropriate.

Notes on the Simulacrum Wilderness Exploration Mechanic

I'm completely in love with the wilderness exploration mechanic from the Simulacrum blog (which I'll call Simulacrum Overland in this blog). It prioritises:

1. Elegant simplicity (which I love because once rules become too baroque I stop using them).
2. Player facing mechanics (good, because I'm playing with the rest of the table, not with myself).
3. Interactions not already present in dungeon based play (good, because variety is the spice of D&D).

I am going to use the process pretty much as presented I think... plus a few more things, of course, because home brewing. Here are my thoughts at the moment, including a bunch of to-dos.

Note: Burden Level & Fatigue → OSE

Simulacrum uses a few abstractions which I'll have to translate to OSE. The first one is burden level, which is easy enough. Here's a bullet point table comparing OSE & B/X movement rates to Simulacrum Overland burden levels:

• 120' (40') ←→ no burden
• 90' (30') ←→  light burden
• 60' (20') ←→ medium burden
• 30' (10') ←→ heavy burden
• 0' (0') ←→ immobile

One way to deal with encumbrance is to use a wagon. Not too convenient for dungeons, however.
(Theodore Gericault)

Note: Weather for Simulacrum Overland

There are a number of systems for determining weather in OSR. I'm going to brew my own, with a view to working with Simulacrum Overland.

Simulacrum Overland is concerned about two conditions - precipitation and temperature. For my part, I am concerned about four seasons: Spring (the season of mud and rain), Summer (campaign season), Fall (harvest), and Winter (when it gets really cold).

I'm working on a first draft for a simple system which I'll share on this blog once it's done.

Muddy roads are inconvenient for hex crawling
(Johann Jungblut)

Note: Adapting Simulacrum Overland Travel to work in non-wilderness contexts

When rolling for Random Encounters in the Simulacrum Overland Travel procedure they are more likely in "wild" hexes and in "unsafe" locations.

That's cool, but doesn't work for one of the things I'm looking to get out of my homebrew - namely to make adventuring in settled areas as eventful as adventuring in the wilderness (corrupt nobles! peasant brigands! tax collectors! family feuds!).

Right now I can think of a few ways to address it:

• Remove the modifiers and have "local folks" entries on the encounter tables. This would be fairly simple, but lessens the difference from travelling through different hex types.
• Just add "local folks" entries to encounter tables where appropriate. That would make non-wild areas less interesting (fewer encounters) and significantly less threatening (assuming "local folks" encounters are less likely to result in fights). On the upside, it's the simplest.
• Leave the encounter tables for "monsters" and have a separate process for "interesting locals". Maybe make it part of the "generating hex features" part of the procedure. The challenge here is deciding on edge cases - where do brigands go? What about farmers who sometimes engage in brigandage? Or farmers in the middle of a dispute that the PCs could dragged into.

I'll definitely have to do some thinking here.

Note: Fatigue → OSE

Simulacrum Overland uses fatigue levels. I'll have to figure out what to do with them. Right now, I'm leaning towards one of two options:

1. Just convert it into HP damage. OSR already has one track for deleterious consequences, and I'm not sure adding more status effects will help what I'm after.
2. Have one "fatigued" status that can be on or off, and which - once on - requires all the different triggers to be addressed (so say, if you're fatigued from lack of food, overheating, and lack of sleep you'll need to eat, cool down, and sleep for the fatigue penalty to be removed).

Note: Develop (or steal) tables for overt and hidden features

I need to strike a good balance between hand placed features (which require some work) and random features, both overt and hidden (which in turn require work to develop as well). 

My sense is that somewhere between 50-75% of hexes should have some sort of hidden feature to encourage digging deeper. I also think that overt features should give hints of potential hidden features.

This is a problem for future me, but one I'll need to solve to my satisfaction.

This looks like the kind of feature where you roll a d6 and maybe get a boon or maybe something goes wrong.
(I'm not sure of the source)

House Rule: Variable Study Time

House Rule: When memorizing spells roll d6. That's the total level of spells the caster can memorize. If memorizing spells after a full day of rest (or rather a full day dedicated to studying) roll 2d6 for the total level of spells.

For example, if the caster rolled a 3 after a night's sleep they can choose to memorize three first level spells, one spell each of the first and second levels, or one third level spell.

Obviously a spellbook
(Jeff Easley)

My thinking is that this will counter the "adventuring day" concept a bit, potentially provide some meaningful choices under time pressure for higher level casters without impacting low level casters. This will obviously add days to get casters back to full readiness. This is intentional and will (hopefully) line up with other house rules and tweaks.

The Variable Study Time house rule is intended for OSE, but is applicable to most Vancian casting rule sets I imagine.

That's it. Simple and elegant, I think. More potentially hard choices to make while adventuring. Not tested in actual play yet, though.

...

I crunched the numbers a bit (see the table below), using the OSE Magic-User spell progression. Assuming average rolls (3.5 for active days, 7 for full days dedicated to studying).

Level 1 and 2 Magic-Users can expect to get all their spells back after a single study session on average. If they dedicate a full day to studying they can expect on average to get all their spells back as long as they're L4 or less; with the best roll even a L6 MU can fill all their spell slots.

At the high end of the scale, a L14 MU will on average need something like 21 days to fill all their spell slots if they're gallivanting about. If they buckle down and study all day long, it should take on average 11 days.

It also means to memorize high level spells, the MU is better off spending the day studying (the chances of getting a 6 is much less on 1d6 than on 2d6). This fits the fiction of powerful but anti-social spellcasters IMO.

Class Level	Active	Full Day	Spell Levels	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	0.3	0.14	1	1
2	0.6	0.29	2	2
3	1.1	0.57	4	2	1
4	1.7	0.86	6	2	2
5	2.6	1.29	9	2	2	1
6	3.4	1.71	12	2	2	2
7	4.9	2.43	17	3	2	2	1
8	6.6	3.29	23	3	3	2	2
9	8.9	4.43	31	3	3	3	2	1
10	11.4	5.71	40	3	3	3	3	2
11	13.4	6.71	47	4	3	3	3	2	1
12	17.1	8.57	60	4	4	3	3	3	2
13	19.7	9.86	69	4	4	4	3	3	3
14	20.9	10.43	73	4	4	4	4	3	3

This matches what I'm looking for in my game, but obviously it can be adjusted by changing the dice rolled, adding modifiers etc.