Dirt Simple Megadungeons

Do you lack the creativity, skill, time, or talent to create a Megadungeon? Do you want a dungeon crawling experience that is epic in scale but without all the hard work? Then this rule is for you.

Instead of writing or making a full mega dungeon, write up and create vague “zones” instead. The zone may be each floor of the dungeon, or different areas on each floor. Perhaps the first floor of a megadungeon is an underground cavern that leads into an ancient crypt. The cavern and the tomb would both be one “zone” of the megadungeon. You describe them in open terms, sights and smells, and accompanying random tables, but you don't draw every room and corridor.

Every exploration hour, the players roll a 1d6 on the table. They find;

[1] Random Encounter

[2] Faction HQ or Monster Lair

[3] Hazard (Trap, Precarious movement, or dungeon “puzzle”)

[4] Landmark (Safe zone, unusual architecture, interesting tidbit)

[5] Snapshot or “Cut Away” Dungeon

[6] Stairs/Next Zone Passage

The reason why “hours” are used here is to make megadungeons feel big. Every turn for you is an in-game hour of exploring many side passages, large caverns, going through several transitional areas and sparsely populated dungeon hallways and side rooms. You might say these areas are smoothing over a more boring part of dungeon gameplay; retracing your steps, dealing with straggling monster encounters, climbing up and down walls that are not inherently dangerous; that sort of thing all rolled into an hour-long unit of time.

This means that you're still getting basically one encounter per hour. You also lose one torch every roll of this dice, indicated you've explored quite a lot of dungeon by then.

The “Snapshot” or “Cut Away” Dungeon is essentially where your players get traditional dungeon crawling among this otherwise abstract system. This snapshot is something the DM prepares in advance for each major area or place in the megadungeon. Essentially, a small to medium scale dungeon with several rooms, corridors, and tactical exploration and placement. The idea here is to concentrate your quality of dungeon making into these areas, so that you can have the “feel” of a megadungeon, without having to draw every single hallway and room.

Bitterhound

I can't take all the credit for this one; many of these ideas were sourced from Anonymous contributors.

Bitterhound – 1d8+1 Magic Hammer

This is a magic hammer appearing as the head of a dog. It is wrought in a dark iron and it's unusual shape has not inhibited its killing potential. If this hammer strikes a foe and the wielder lets go of the hammer OR if they are killed/knocked out that round and lose grip of the hammer, the “mouth” of the hammer opens and has bitten the target instead. It still deals the regular damage of the attack, but the hammer has now got its jaws on the target.

The dog's mouth grips into flesh very hard, and on certain body parts, may bite down to the bone. Any attempt to chisel or pull off the hammer will result in it just biting down harder, with all the unending pressure of metal. In this form, the hammer emits a subtle curse onto the wearer.

Wild animals that are hunted in part by dogs (bears, boars, wolves, rabbits, foxes, etc.) now despise the one who the hammer has bitten into. They always roll the worst possible reaction checks, or run into one group of 1d4 of any of these types of animals once per day when traveling through the wilderness. Within a city or town, the animals are kept mostly at bay, but when traveling the roads they will always stalk and try to attack the person right as soon as they are alone or setting up camp. Animals that are too small to pose a serious threat instead attempt to steal or damage vital party equipment, or even lead the bitten one off a cliff or into a more dangerous monster with a fake chase.

This power is only active while the “dog” is biting the person. If the hammer's head is broken off from its handle, the head continues to bite and the effect continues. The Bitterhound's curse is ended by casting a remove curse spell, or upon death where it releases its jaws and serve a new master.

Cosmology and the Chain of Limits- Higher & Lower Realms

Alternate realities, dimensions, realms, or planes of existence aren't uniform. This goes beyond differences to the overall alignment, the residents, the size and geography, or even the “rules” of the dimension. On top of all these; every reality sits on a level on the cosmic chain of limits. Every realm or place that can exist exists at a state of highness and energy- some scholars believe the chain is limitless in both directions, while some think that there is a definite bottom- a lifeless, lightless pit of nothingness where the great evils will one day be banished forever.

However, all of these limits exist as a spectrum and only are characterized through relativistic means. For instance, the mortal realm or “prime material” plane could be used as the benchmark of standard or neutral, but compared to realms below it is a paradise, and compared to the realms above it is a purgatory. As such, objective measurements are useless. Instead, there is only higher or lower. However, these realms do not necessarily have to be cosmically separated from each other; they could be places in the core setting- in the same way in some more mythologically inspired worlds you can climb to heaven or dig to hell, these could apply to these too.

Additionally, each realm exists on a limit, but the limit can also expand infinitely outwards in horizontal motion as well. You might well exist in a high-fantasy medieval world, and then next to it is a bronze age mythology inspired fantasy world- these are different realms, but they exist on the same level of the cosmic chain.

Higher

Realms Higher on the cosmic chain to your own are usually heavenly realms, spirit places, or seem to exude both power, magic, and forms of authority or morality on the realm beneath. Examples of these realms to a human perspective would be places like the Celestial spheres, Asgard, the spirit realm, or other realms of enhanced reality.

These places are, in comparison with a lower realm, more beautiful and filled with life. The beings and races within this realm are more powerful by birth then anything from the lesser realm- spirit beasts are more powerful then mortal animals, demigods are greater then the greatest mortal champions, they have no base beings like orcs or humans, but superior creatures like cloud giants or numenoreans. You could imagine the standard fantasy races as being here but just “better” versions, like wood elves in your home setting are more like high elves here, OR these races are totally replaced with greater beings. The default of generic character/mortal/character sort of standard in this setting is just higher then from the main world.

In this realm, food and drink is of another level higher then the middle realm; even a pauper has lavish feasts fit for a King in our place. The same to goes for magic and treasure. The Gods or Kami may trade platinum coins between themselves for standard transactions; gold is too common and lesser of a material. These realms also often contain supernatural metals or materials too that is much higher in strength and purity then anything in realms below; one of these falling to the mortal realm is equivalent to a high level magic item being dropped at random.

To beings of lesser realms; coming here is like a supreme challenge. Everything, from the most basic of threats to the competition from intelligent beings of this realm, become incredibly more difficult as you aren't made of the same stuff. Groups of adventurers of high or name level will be akin to starting adventurers in their home country- imagine dragons or giants being basic level 1 enemies. It would incredibly difficult to carve out a niche in this world- though richly rewarding as even the most basic of treasures or companions would be greater then the greatest in your own world.

Also; beings who come from a lesser dimension to this one may find themselves becoming more powerful over the course of their life from ingesting its food and breathing its air; or through a bit of Lamarckian evolution their offspring would be considered greater. For example, a human mating with a God will produce a demigod, or simply living and being raised in a higher dimension equates to better-then-perfect growth conditions from your home world, resulting in superiority.

Lower

Realms Lower then your own on the cosmic chain are dark, shadowy, or entropic places. Lost or fallen spirits tend to end up here, either as punishment or weakness for being unable to stay in a higher realm. You could imagine dying to be like falling down a realm, where as ascension is going up a realm. Many scholars theorize the cosmic chain is not a linear chain but more like a steep funnel; it's incredibly easy to fall down, but very hard to climb up. Examples of lower dimensions include hell dimensions, shadow realms, ghost or veil worlds- something like the Upside Down or Silent Hill's dark world would be examples, or the shadow world/dark world from many games could apply. You could also apply this to fallen worlds too; something like the world of Dark Souls could be thought of as having fallen into a “lower” cosmic state then it used to be.

These places are, in comparison to the neutral middle realm above it, darker and deader. They tend to be more quiet, with less biodiversity and less life- the cosmic order and laws of nature are less important here, which tends to mean more chaos and unreality in a bad way, as opposed to higher realms which are more filled with magic, these realms are more filled with curses and oppressive darkness. They drain energy instead of giving it; much like a negative energy plane. For this reason, the beings that live here are lesser in number, weaker, less intelligent, and less moral or reliable then beings above them. You could imagine “dark” or stunted versions of the mortal races or animals- perhaps just the standard races but with more present mutations or general apathy, or a more pre-modernist view of the ancient world (people were old at 25 year old, everyone was dumb and illiterate and burned witches left and right; that kind of nonsense) but taken straight as how these lesser people actually are. Or the more standard races or animals could be replaced with totally new ones; things like the Tarkatan from Mortal Kombat; not necessarily inferior to beings of the realms above in terms of strength but more savage and less refined or spiritual.

The physical world of this dimension is also lesser then the one above it. Food may rot quicker and silver, if it exists at all, would tarnish quickly though would be unparalleled in its beauty. Most physical items are less sturdy and rot away faster, people are less wealthy regardless of the actual economic systems; Kings and nobles of this realm would live in homes that a standard villager in the core fantasy world would have. In the same way, magic and warfare are similarly different; the most powerful archmage in this setting may only be able to cast 3^rd or 4^th level spells from the core fantasy world; your apprentices are equivalent to practiced magicians in this world. This could just be because the ambient magic here is weaker then the upper dimensions; though this wouldn't stop a tremendously powerful magic from your world being an unstoppable demigod in equivalence. As for combat; the same applies- the most powerful troops here may have cobbled together armor and weapons and fight about as strong as some goblins or orcs if they're really outstanding.

Exploring this realm from the realm above would be very easy- you would be outclassing everything here with even a modicum of experience. To the people of this realm, your characters would seem incredible beautiful, smart, strong, and powerful with only average or slightly above-average ability scores. You would very much be like characters in a video game where you're worshiped as the chosen one after the tutorial mission! Even a medium level group of adventures from this world would be able to defeat and dominate almost everything here- the greatest monster in this world may be a single ogre or troll in comparison to the weakness of its people. It would be incredibly easy to dominate this world and live as Kings, but everything here would hardly be worth it. The treasure would be much less value then that from your home world; gold may not even exist, the biggest gemstone is just a tiny thing that would go on a wedding band in your world and here it would be the crown jewel of an Emperor.

Staying in this realm for extended periods of time from a higher dimension would be bad for the health. Perhaps its because the realm is higher in quantities of negative energy (or just lacks as much life energy); you'd be eating poor food and breathing poor air, and you'd slowly degrade over time from this, despite your inherent superiority over the beings here. It could also just be the same as the higher realm where only children born here are lessened- in much the same way when a God comes down and has a demigod, they are lesser then the true God. In the same way; a human breeding with a being in this realm may result in a greater then average but lesser to what the human would be in the real world. This feels very similar to how Gods might degrade their bloodlines through mixing with mortals is what happens if you live among these lesser beings from a world lesser in cosmic importance.

Sea of Thieves is OSR + 12 Random Pirate Treasures

This isn't exactly a revolutionary opinion, and I'm sure other people have talked about wavecrawls before, but Sea of Thieves is like super OSR as fuck.

You have limited supplies on the open ocean, and your main goal is to get treasure. Every fight with other ships drains your supplies- wood planks for repair, food for healing, as well as your cannonballs. Treasure chests are carried aboard your ship and while having more of them doesn't slow you down as per encumbrance, it does make for more risk and more reward- as its a gamble to keep sailing when you already have a bunch of chests as you could be sunk and lose it all. Some treasure chests are also cursed and add to more resources- such as the Chest of Sorrows which cries and fills up your ship with water that you have to bail out.

While the open ocean is hostile and unforgiving with many encounters; skeleton crews, other players, sea monsters, storms and so on- islands are your sources of respite. In many ways these are like towns, but islands are even better in D&D towns because while they can be used for resupply they can ALSO be plundered for treasure, some of them being inhabited by dangerous skeletons or traps as well. Plus solving the riddles from each treasure map to find treasure is just genius. You could totally port this game right over into dungeon crawling adventures with or without the basic classes or typical rules and it would feel right at home.

12 Random Pirate Treasures – Roll to see what you find in a pirate's treasure chest!

[1] Doubloons matey!

[2] Mummified Monkey. Worth a fortune to one insane collector.

[3] Turtle Shell Hat. Makes you look like a turtle while you're swimming, +1 AC

[4] Crate of limes; protects against scurvy.

[5] Jollyjack Sword. The OG pirate's cutlass. +1 magic weapon, cuts your flag into people's skin.

[6] Mermaids comb. Valuable on its own; present to the mermaids and one will marry you.

[7] Walrus cream. Rub on skin for good ointment- makes you smell nice. If you put some on and smell like it around a walrus; it will want to marry you. Right now. On the beach.

[8] Salted Megaladon Meat. Very tasty, restores 1d6 hit points for being such a delicacy.

[9] Reed Whistle of Winds. Blow the whistle and the winds blow as long as you can hold your note.

[10] Rat stick. It's just a stick used to beat up stowaway rats. Deals 1d2 damage. Somehow every rat knows about this stick and fears it. Rats make a morale check when hit.

[11] Bastard Banana. Looks like a banana. When unpeeled, unsuspecting fruit-eater is attacked by the hundred venomous spiders just released. Pick up the peel and fold it up to reuse.

[12] Cursed Cannonball. +2 to hit. If it lands on the enemy ship, will lodge and plug it's own hole in their hull; appears ineffective. Actually curses the whole ship as long as its onboard.

Vagueposting- Weapons

Vagueposting- “Weapons”

I've been recently mulling over the concept of “weapons” and the advancement of weapons. More specifically; vague weapons that aren't really real, or rather, how they can be described without going into detail. These “weapons” are essentially a retrofuturistic vision of what ancient or fantasy people imagined weapons of the future being life, but without relying on actual real world technology and with as little magical or supernatural context as possible. Also in this write up I'm going to use the term “weapon” for 99% of it but armor, equipment, or even vehicles could be substituted based on what you're looking for.

Imagine it like this; a club is the most basic and primitive weapon a person could use. Then it advances to a spear. Then the spear becomes the short sword, made of bronze, and then later the swerd in an iron age sense. Of course at this point we can't say objectively a poleaxe is superior to a sword, obviously in real life weapons are used for different purposes. Now in real life, we know that from this point we could roughly (very generally) say that weapons advanced to muskets, then guns, and then will advance to laser guns or robot drones (more then likely the drones in real life). But in a fantasy setting, these are using types of technology and such that didn't exist in the day. Naturally neither did metalworking exist that could make the fullplate and polearms of the day exist in the bronze ages, but hopefully you get a concept of what I'm going for here.

This rather vague concept for weapons and “weapons” as superior and advanced things in a fantasy context (more on that weapon) comes from three main sources that I can think of at this time. I'm sure there are more that vaguely fit this, and I'm sure I've seen more that I can't list now (probably something from Dominions), but these are the ones I thought of while writing this “vague post”.

The first is from “Conan of the Isles”, the only Conan book I have read at the time of this writing. My Appendix N is shameful, I know. In this book, Conan has a vision of being taken to a black hall which shows an endless battle between good and evil; man and chaos. In this battle, Conan sees men in animal skins battling with clubs; primitives fighting with primitive weapons. People of his day fighting with more contemporary weapons, and then people fighting with weapons he doesn't recognize. These are obviously implied to by guns and laser weapons and the like, but in our context they could be anything. They are intentionally left vague, which I think is great.

The second is from a little game called “Defenders of the Oasis”, which is one of my secret favorite games. It's a casual game that would have been a phone game if it was released anywhere close to 10 years ago. Basically you play as a Pharaoh and have to find an obelisk to obtain a glyph of power- the whole while connecting cities on the map with roads, mining for ancient technology, and growing in power to fight barbarians that attack at the end of each stage. I really, really like this game partially for its story and in-universe elements; mostly for divorcing magic and the supernatural from the western fantasy Wizard archetype that is so prevalent and that I complain about all the time. In this fantasy setting, which is literally just Egypt, the Pharaoh IS magic and he is powerful.

In one of the campaigns, you actually play as a female priestess. You don't get a new sprite or anything (it's a shitty old game remember), but in the first level you steal the glyph from the sacred isle of the Gods, which angers them. The first god who sends their wrath at you is Thoth, who brings down “scrolls of wisdom” which the barbarians use to make mighty weapons and armor. I love this passage because of how vague it is. In game, we get to see what weapons and armor they are more or less (just gives the barbarians technology bonuses in fights, which usually only you get), but in lore it could mean anything, which is why I like it. Thoth's knowledge of weapons, you could easily imagine, would include things like muskets and modern guns and catapults and stuff. But this doesn't really fit the imagine of an Egyptian supernatural technology alternate history; I'd much prefer to see this as something like a giant mechanical scarab, the kopesh designed in such a way it can cut through almost anything, weaving the hot desert sands into cloaks that let you blend into the dunes, that kind of thing. It's almost magic and a bit mystical without being a “spell”, you know? It's “knowledge”, which fits better in a mythological setting anyway. Many of the powers of the Gods could just be secret knowledge, and magic is often fluffed as secret knowledge, not something separate.

The third and final example I have for this concept is from a great Chinese wuxia movie, this one called the “Dragon Gate Inn”. I love this movie and it's shitty translation. It's chalk full of Chinese fantasy tropes, which I love. There's an evil Eunuch who wants to take over the legitimate government, tons of people on wires battling with decent choreography and sword fights with decent special effects- all practical for this day and age which has a charm to itself. However right in the opening scenes of this movie we can see how cruel and evil the Ennuch's splinter government is; they are testing “new weapons” on prisoners. All of these are arrowheads; the “Plum Blossom” arrow, the “Dog Teeth” arrow, and the “Phoenix Tail” arrow. The Plum Blossom and Dog Teeth just seem to be deadly effective, where as the Phoenix Tail arrow is fired and dramatically curves to strike down the last prisoner, implying it has some kind of homing or tracking ability.

Now in any kind of realistic setting or sense, these would have a lot of problems or be downright impossible. They'd be far less effective then real, simple, straight arrows. But something about this I really like. Like you found a way to sculpt the metal or bind it up just right; these special arrows cause horrible injuries that are hard to heal, making these arrows very good for injuring and capturing enemy soldiers. They may even fly faster or straighter then regular arrows, despite it having no sensible basis in reality. They're just “more advanced”. We don't really get a good idea of what these do in Dragon Pass Inn other then the grievous injuries that the Dog Teeth arrows make when they are used later in the story, but I still like them.

Finally- ask yourself this. How can we port this over and use this organically?

Well firstly, the one big advantage of written media (and by extension, tabletop games) is that this vagueness can abound. You can stretch over long periods of time with a single sentence, or imply a ton of stuff without detailing any of it. Something as simple as “then he brought forth many advanced weapons, and used them to defeat the tribes and bring peace to the land” implies a huge amount without needing to actually show any of it as opposed to a movie or bit of animation which is visual, or a video game which is more tactile. You could easily play a tabletop game and grant a player an “advanced weapon”, never actually describe it, but mention how it isn't necessarily magical or doesn't use technology as we understand it. Of course, this is a bit of a cop out. We wanted to have this cake and eat it too, so some description is both desired and necessary.

Secondly; technology. In many tabletop games with the usual high fantasy setting, technology tends to be in a roughly medieval or renaissance stasis. Of course along with this comes the unrealism- many fantasy settings include things like airships or steampunk elements, clockwork robots, and/or magitech that we could explore to be the creative force behind our “advanced” weapons. In some of these cases this is enough, but in others we might just argue that you can add a few mechanical elements to a weapon that normally wouldn't have them (or just wouldn't work at all) to make it more advanced.

Similar to the Dragone Gate Inn example- we can just not be specific. I like the idea of weapons being tested or made of materials that are just extremely good; unique shapes or construction. Maybe a strangely shaped axe head is just better then a regular axe head, but is hard to make and is therefore a more advanced or rare weapon. It probably has a name to signify it, like Crescent Moon Slicing-Axe. It's an Axe that can perform draw cuts as well as a sword, shaped like a crescent moon, and can still chop wood just as well.

Another example involves things from a campaign a friend of mine ran for me many years ago. In that my character (who I think used polearms or a naginata or something) got a new weapon. Basically it was a polearm with a rotating blade which could be flicked out; it was disguised as a walking stick. My DM declared that this weapon could be used to make sneak attacks too; by flicking the end of the staff the blade could spin out and perform a cut the same as an attack. I was dubious and told him it wouldn't work like that; the spinning blade wouldn't have the same force as a blade on the end of a long lever, but he said not to worry about the realism of it and just accept it. I realize now of course I was in the wrong over this, but like I said, there is a leap to accept a fictional universe with different rules. Now I think the concept is pretty interesting; spring loaded or double edged weapons with twice the effectiveness of a normal weapon, or with bonus features like sneak attacks or bonus to-hit from being accurate and capable of hitting many times in a few seconds.

These weapons are created not by magic users or by specific arcane practices, but instead by practiced weapons smiths and ancient warrior philospher kings. It could be the ancient empire who was against evil magic in the setting used these weapons to cut a swathe in the world; a nice backdrop for a Conan-esque barbarian distrustful of magic but still capable of rising above “mundane” equipment through their superior "technology".

Examples of Vagueposting “Advanced Weapons” Table – Roll 1d10

[1] Long iron poles with no ornamentation. Can be squeezed while pointing at something; destroys it. Could be implied to be laser technology in a fantasy world (ala many modules that have crashed spaceships and stuff) or could be some kind of vague “ultra destructive force” that the metal just “has” and can emit through being crafted and handled in some special way.

[2] Deadly Jacks. Little spiked orbs or caltrops that can be thrown. Somehow fly extremely well, perhaps homing in on living things to get their spikes in, link their hooks together to become spiked chains, and totally nullify any motion or actions to escape their grasp. Maybe less of a “weapon” and more of a cruel torture and capture device. Might be designed in such a way that they always land upwards or just conveniently bounce off walls and terrain and flop into the path of oncoming people so they step on them or get hit by them, because you know, you can just forge the angles that way.

[3] Death Butterfly. Better then the Deadly Jacks. Basically imagine an evil weapons made of sharpened super metal and glass; perhaps an elf super weapon. You throw it and it always returns to the user; even if totally unrealistic it just curves around and comes back to your hands unless trapped in a sack of some material it can't cut through. When you throw it cuts off people's heads and stuff, or just punches through their chest even if your throw really shouldn't have the strength to do that with its weight and leverage and stuff; it just “catches the wind” and punches through people.

[4] Thingamajig-Tier gadget device like from Ed, Edd, & Eddy. Basically a cube, sphere, briefcase, etc. that contains a million weapons. By handling the weapon a certain way, it can activate the different weapons and bring them to bare against your enemies. Also; see a Swiss Army Knife but bigger and with weapons; or the like Cube Style.

[5] Da Vinci-tier machines. Also see the game "Besiege" where you build murder weapons. Mostly things like the carts with spinning blades on them or flying machines. These aren't technically hand-held weapons in the ways the others are but in a lot of ways fit the definition better; a weapon the user is protected while using by riding inside and such. But if you like Fighters more heroic then this isn't exactly what you'd use for their ultimate weapons.

[6] Kill glow. Some kind of powered light as a weapon. Not necessarily shot out of things like a laser beam, but moreso a trained form of light or maybe heat/energy/electricity that flies around and kill things from the users hand. It's a weapon, not a spell. Deal with it.

[7] Pop-Out Spear head. Some sort of spear which has a standard looking spearhead, except it has a lot of very fine holes over it. When shoved into someone, the holes erupt out spikes inside, then quickly draw them back in; causing huge internal damage and causing much worse injuries then first assumed. Having the spikes retract adds to believablity of the spear being able to penetrate into people and then be pulled back out without all the spikes catching in their body.

[8] Super Flail. Just a flail with some super heavy element build into the head, or the head+chain being made in some kind of way where it just becomes inherently super powerful. Can bowl into objects with much more force then possible, like knocking through bricks, busting through steel shields, basically being a bit physically unstoppable.

[9] Gas Blower. Could be something like a forge bellows if you want to make it look more genuine to a fantasy world as opposed to a more modern flamethrower looking thing. These weapons use gas sucked up from the earth and soils of mines. You could see flammable gas, freezing gas, confusion/knockout gas, corrosive gas, lightning-attracting gas and so forth. Fantasy version of natural gasses, but put into a weapon for useful fighting. Also could be put into a hollow flask or whatever and thrown as a bomb, but that tends to be a bit different from a "weapon".

[10] Super Duper Sword. Made of super metals, and curved and refined in the special perfect way. It has a specific shape, edge, and was folded over one million times to produce the finest blade possible. Still not magical, or may have some kind of supernatural power based on how it was made, but isn't girly “wizard” magic. Basically it's just a super powerful sword that due to its angles and construction it can cut straight through lesser metals, block blows easily, slide around enemy armors and stuff, is perfectly balanced and just the right weight and speed, etc.

[x] Liquid metal weapon. Kind of cheating and doesn't fit; since these already exist as other magic items. But basically; a lump or metal or handle which morphs the metal of itself into any weapon when it is needed.

[♫] Musical weapons. Lutes or harps that can play music that hurts people. Almost counts as this concept but is a bit too thematic and has some cross over with bards, bardic magic, and so on. Some Wuxia or Chinese Fantasy stuff already has some of this though it isn't really a more “advanced” form of normal weaponry, just a thematic take on people being so good at music they fight with it.

[g] Just Guns. This isn't really an answer- as I mentioned earlier. We're trying not to advance weapons in a real world historical sense- but even people in the day had advanced weapons like repeating crossbows and hand-gunnes that would shape the future of warfare. Fighters could still get a bonus with these despite not fitting a martial theme, because they are weapons.

[?] Hand to Hand. Once again, not really an advanced weapon. But the idea of a fighting school or technique getting so good over time that it starts to be better then physical weapons. Your hand to hand kung fu gets so good that any weapon would just be a detriment in a fight- your special technique can rock anybody way better then a sword or axe could.

[Class] Baby Murderbeast

Art @Huka (kinda NSFW)

Baby Murderbeast

HD- d12

Maximum AC- 16 / Minimum Starting Hit-Points- 8

You know whenever you watch a fantasy movie and there's always some giant bipedal monster with armor on their legs who stomps through the army and is a big deal? That's you. But you're not fully grown yet, you're just a baby.

You're also CUTE.

You're about the size of a person, an adorable giant baby creature. You're bipedal, and while certainly lacking the mental sharpness of an adult of your kind or a human, you are smart enough to walk around, talk, and use basic weapons. You're a bit clumsy and are easily distracted for being so young.

You're pretty tough, which is your main “ability” starting off. Your Base AC is 12 and you deal +1 damage on a hit starting off. Increase your damage on a hit by +1 every even level. You also have preternatural Strength. Set your Strength to 17 if it is lower then 17 upon character creation. Increase your Strength score by +1 at level 3, 6, and 9.

Whenever you're about to be attacked by a monster, roll a reaction check. On a result of 7 or higher, the monster confuses you as one of its young. You get a +3 to this roll at 1^st level, which is REDUCED by -1 at 4^th and 8^th level. You're not getting any cuter, you just become more of a snot nosed kid. Intelligent creatures aren't affected by this, but most with maternal instincts or morality will have to make a saving throw to willingly kill you, since you're just a kid.

At 10^th level, you are no longer cute. You're no longer a baby, you've grown up. Of course, you aren't an adult, you are now an Adolescent Murderbeast. You get your growth spurt, awkward cracking voice, and your first sexual urges. You're not cute enough to trigger bonus reaction checks with monsters, but you're now so big and strong it hardly matters anymore. Replace your Strength with Giant Strength, meaning you only use your actual Strength score against giant creatures. Otherwise you Overwhelm lesser creatures, and always win Strength contests against mere humans.

Additionally, you get that heart breaking moment where you have to choose between your old friends and protectors or joining a group or gang of beings of your own kind who like to rampage and eat people. You can choose to fall into a gang of 2d4 other teenage murderbeasts who will give you all kinds of bad influences.

6 Ways to do Boulder Traps

[1] The Classic

In this scenario, the character(s) activate the rolling boulder to release when they get close enough to it that it will build up speed faster then they can run, such as down a long incline. The ball may also roll along a flat, level floor if it stars up in a chamber above the main hall, enough to give it the momentum it needs to crush people. At the end of its path it may be deposited in a secondary chamber or niche, waiting for a monster or magical thing to reset the trap.

[2] The Path

In this scenario, the boulder is large enough and wide enough to be set at the end of a hallway or long room which is difficult for people to traverse. Such as in the example picture; tight walkways that the ball can travel over in a straight line, but people will have to follow a long and winding path, meaning there is no way to escape this except by hanging on to a ledge and letting the boulder roll over your hands. Could also be fit in a room filled with mud and just a few thin rails that the boulder rolls on. Essentially- the boulder rolls faster then traverse the room.

[3] No way Back

This trap is set up to gather speed but not actually to crush the adventurers. Instead, there is a side passage or door the adventurers can easily escape through that has a small tunnel. The ball then goes over a ledge or through a secret wall and falls into a chamber where it stops. This blocks the way back, thus meaning that the adventurers cannot follow their own route back through the dungeon- this serves as a method to cut them off from the familiar paths they've taken before.

[4] Fake Safety

The boulder trap in this scenario starts rolling towards the group, but with some speed or luck you can get through a side passage to safety. This side passage should only be through a very thin wall or on the end of a ledge that is impossible to climb the other direction. The ball rolls past them, but as they catch their breath from running away the boulder will come back, either smashing through a false wall or coming down a long and seemingly unconnected corridor. Hopefully, the targets of this trap will be caught unaware as they try to catch their breath. Secondly, this second fake safety chamber could have doors or hallways leading off that just lead to brick walls or don't actually exist, being illusions or tricks of the light, thus keeping them stuck in this hallway. Essentially, this boulder gets two passes to try and crush the people who activated it.

[5] Trap Niche

This method is much more cruel then the above, and would probably make people upset if you used it in an actual game. The boulder is on a slope but with perception and speed you can get out of the way into a small niche or side passage. However this niche or side passage is always a dead end; with the floor having a false bottom or secret depression that is activated shortly after the trap is sprun. The boulder stops rolling in that hole and essentially just traps whoever went into the side passage behind the rock. This could be anything from wasting several turns to destroy the boulder or pry it loose, to having the person inside suffocate after several hours or even starve to death over many weeks. I also like the idea of this trap letting you only “escape” it if you essentially reset it; you have to push the rock back up in to place and avoid triggering it to move past, since even if you unblock the side passage the main passage would be blocked.

[6] Fake Boulder

Finally, this trap subverts the entire boulder trap. From a distance, the boulder appears as a round object that will roll towards you and crush you, but it is actually a large piece of worked stone. It may have a chain or weight that, when activated, slowly moves towards the players. It can't go far though because the chain it is connected to instead pulls a new trap in motion- the sliding of the floor or a bunch of spikes come out or some other trap is activated down the line where people will run to avoid the rolling boulder that they think is coming. This also acts as a plug for the hallway as nobody can squeeze past the boulder; the space behind it could be empty or simply require you to activate the trap and let the “boulder” fall down far enough you can step around it to go past it.

[Bonus] The classic boulder trap is sometimes said to be flawed due to the ability to dive into a the corner of a square hallway in order to escape it. I do think this could be a legitimate tactic depending on the size of the hallway, but one way to fix it would be to have raised corners or filled in tracts running alongside the main path. You could even set this up to be secreative; have the corner space of the hallway near the floor filled with dirt, slanted edges to act as “drains” or pipes from further on down in the dungeon so pesky adventurers can't escape a crushing boulder.