Today Encounter-a-Day’s been around for two years.

Thanks to everyone who’s supported me over this endeavor!

A while ago, someone on Twitter mentioned using shelf liner to keep dungeon tiles from sliding around. I thought I’d posted about it here, but I can’t find that post so I guess I didn’t.

For those not familiar, shelf liner is a rubber material meant to line drawers and shelves and keep things from sliding around. The beauty of it is that it’s entirely based on the high traction of the rubber, no adhesives whatsoever.

It’s also very cheap, I just picked up a 1.5′x5′ roll for $4.17 at Target, which is enough to line two sides of a foamcore board with about an inch of “gutter” on either side.

From the moment I heard the idea, I thought it was awesome, but I only just got around to picking this stuff up and it’s absolutely incredible how well it works. The dungeon tiles stick so firmly to the mat that it’s pretty much impossible to move them around without picking them up completely. It’s like they’re glued to the mat.

And the tiles stay at extreme angles. I had to hold the board up at a right angle, completely vertical, before they finally fell off, and up to that point they didn’t budge at all.

One little tip: I had a hard time finding the shelf liner, and had to actually ask someone at Target for help. Turns out it was in the cleaning supplies section, of all places.

Only three people entered the contest for the google wave invites, and I’ve just invited all of them. So congratulations to:

Kenton Henry
DeaconFrost
Guy Russel

I’ll post their entries soon.

Thanks to The Last Rogue who tweeted about this awesome D&D 4e Combat Tracker.

Some of you may know that I’ve previously endorsed Turn Wacher as my initiative tracker of choice. It’s got a lot of great features, including some things which this new program lacks, but it’s also got two major downsides: it’s not free, and it’s meant for D&D 3rd Edition.

Neither of those are particularly bad; it works just fine for 4th edition too. But I always feel like a shill when I recommend a program that’s not free.

Anyways, I’m happy to say this combat tracker is really, really good. It allows you to import custom and official monsters from the Monster Builder, and also lets you load characters from the Character Builder. You can, of course, enter them manually as well. Once you add something, it’s added to a library so it’s easy to reuse.

It’s also got a really nice interface for keeping track of conditions, automatically rolling saving throws and recharge powers, keeping track of what powers have been used, and has a display for a creature’s full stat block to boot.

I’ve finally gotten some invites for Google Wave, and have been looking forward to this opportunity to run a contest.

All you have to do to enter the contest is send me a D&D 4e monster based on a creature from Magic: The Gathering. Everyone may enter up to three times, once for each tier (Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tier). Prizes will be given out as follows:

• Best Translation: The monster which best translates the mechanics from the magic card to D&D. Preference is given to cards with interesting and unusual mechanics.
• Funniest: The monster which most amuses me.
• Heroic Door Prize: Anyone who submitted a monster in the heroic tier has a chance of winning this by random draw.
• Paragon Door Prize: Anyone who submitted a monster in the paragon tier has a chance of winning this by random draw.
• Epic Door Prize: Anyone who submitted a monster in the epic tier has a chance of winning this by random draw.
• DDI Door Prize: Anyone who submitted their monsters’ XML files from the D&D Insider Adventure Tools/Monster Builder has a chance of winning this by random draw.

Rules and Such

1. I don’t know how much of a response this will get, but to keep things sane for myself I’m limiting this to the first 100 entries, with the caveat that I reserve the right to discard entries which appear to be rushed for the sake of making it in under that deadline. I doubt there will be that much demand, though, so don’t worry too much about this. I’ll also keep you all posted if there is a surge in demand, so you’ll have warning.
2. I understand that not everyone wishes to subscribe to D&D Insider, and thus I do not require the XML files from the monsters you submit. That said, they are greatly appreciated and there’s a door prize just for submitting the XML from your monsters. So please do!
3. Please submit all of your monsters (up to 3, one for each tier) in a single email.
4. Please submit all of your monsters in plain text in the body of your email, in addition to attaching the XML files from the Monster Builder
5. Please include the name of the card which the monster is based off of, if it is not obvious, or give some other indication of its relation to Magic if the monster isn’t based directly off of a card.
6. If you have some concept that requires multiple monsters from a single tier (e.g. a group of synergistic elves), you may submit them; however, for the purposes of the contest, they will count as a single monster, giving you a single chance at the door prize. You may still submit monsters from the other tiers.
7. By submitting your monsters to me, you grant me permission to publish them with credit given to you.
8. The deadline for this contest is 11:59 PM EST, Wednesday, November 18th. If I receive an entry after the deadline, even if it was sent before the deadline and network issues delayed it, it will be disqualified.
9. Submit your entries to itoltz+wavecontest@gmail.com Don’t forget to include the name you’d like me to use when I credit you, and the email address I should use for the invitation if different than the one you’re using to send me the email.

Good luck!

Not RPG related, but I think there’s a sizable overlap between RPGers and board gamers, so…

I’m quite proud to announce my Dominion Randomizer. It’s called, cleverly enough, “Asmor’s Dominion Tool.” I know, I rock the casbah when it comes to names.

It’s optimized for use on iPhones and iPod Touches, and should work pretty well on any other device with at least a 320-pixel-wide resolution.

For those wondering what the hell Dominion is, Dominion is a really, really cool card game which recently won the SDJ (that’s Spiel des Jahres– literally translates to Game of the Year, the most prestigious award a board game can win) and is very popular with pretty much everyone who tries it. You can read more about it at Board Game Geek.

The 4e DMG2 debuted official rules for ‘companion characters,’ which are basically just monsters that work for the PCs. I’ve been doing similar things for a while, and have even used this concept as a replacement for an actual PC when I had a player (the ubiquitous tag-along-significant-other) who didn’t do well with the complexity of a full character.

Now, one problem every game has to find a way to deal with is that of absentee players. Clasically, I’ve been in the school of thought that PCs of absent players either are not present if the story permits or otherwise fade into the background– they’re technically there, but are not played in combat, don’t get any treasure/rewards, etc). In 4e in particular, PCs are just too damn complicated to ask a player to take over someone else’s.

But… a companion character is quite easy to control in addition to your normal character. It’s basically a monster, everything relevant is on a handy little sheet.

So I started thinking: what if the players, in addition to their normal character sheets, also maintained a ’stunt double’ companion character, which could be run by someone else if the player can’t make it.

So to make a stunt double, here’s what you do.

The stunt double gets the PC’s hit points, healing surge value, healing surges, defenses, and ability scores.

The stunt double also gets one each of the PC’s basic melee and basic ranged attacks.

The player then chooses one at-will power, one encounter power, one daily power, and one utility power; the stunt double gets all of these, using the PC’s normal numbers. Care should be taken to choose relatively simple and straight-forward powers, but also ones which are ‘iconic’ to the PC. In particular, the stunt double should still be able to fulfill the PC’s role in the party (so, for example, a cleric PC should almost always give his stunt double healing word as the encounter power). Ideally, it should be both easy for anyone to play this stunt double and also feel like the same character as the PC.

Finally, the player chooses any three skills and the stunt double gains those skills at the PC’s normal values; all other skills are rolled at ability score modifier + half level, as normal.

Sometimes you’re reading things online and you come upon an off-the-cuff comment that just deserves to be hoisted up and displayed to the world.

For example, there might be a Good/Evil zero sum rule. So every demon that enters the world allows an angel to enter to balance him. Which btw explains why the forces of good are so reluctant to intervene directly, they don’t want to allow a corosponding number of demons to intervene elsewhere. Or more interestingly it might be sort of the opposite of the planescape assumption. That is to say the prescence of supernatural evil in the mortal world might balance out by moving the whole mortal plane that much closer to goodness.

Andor, What holds the world in balance? (or, why aren’t demons over-running the world?) – EN World

I don’t know about you, but that’s so elegant and perfect that I just want to assimilate it into every setting ever.

The vampires in Zendikar have an interesting mechanical theme in that many of them get stronger when your opponent is at 10 life, 10 life being half the 20 life each player starts with in a game of Magic. Once I realized how similar that was to 4th edition’s bloodied mechanic, I realized that I just had to go and stat up some of Zendikar’s vampires!

Flavor wise, I’ll leave you with the description given by the Magic creative team.

Vampires live openly in Guul Draz and are famed for the decadence and perversion of their lifestyle. Bloodchiefs, the progenitors of their race, control the opulent city of Malakir. Vampire society is divided by “family” allegiances, each family beholden to its Bloodchief. Each family controls a small amount of territory and routes through the swamp, although the main currency of any family is in its connections and relationships. The tastes and passions of the Bloodchief tend to be imprinted on the vampires he or she creates.

There are five greater families in Guul Draz: Nirkana, Kalastria, Emevera, Urnaav, and Ghet. Dozens of other lesser families are scattered across Guul Draz, each with a contingent of undead nulls appropriate to their place in vampire society. Whenever a vampire fully drains the blood of a living creature without destroying the husk, a vampire null is created from the body. If nulls are left without orders, they will hunt and kill living things that they can find.

-Magic Creative Team, A Planeswalker’s Guide to Zendikar

Guul Draz Vampire XML

Guul Draz Lacerator XML

Guul Draz Bloodletter XML

Guul Draz Null XML

Tactics

Nulls swarm enemies, attacking mindlessly and attempting to maneuver to give flanking bonuses to the true vampires. The bloodletter dances through the melee, attempting to keep as many foes bloodied as possible at all times. Lacerators use their claws only as a last resort, prefering to grab and bite their enemies even when the enemy isn’t bloodied. The vampires stay hidden until someone’s bloodied, and then concentrate on the bloodied foe(s).

I received this email earlier today.

Subject: Your Monster Maker
Okay, I have been trying to find stuff for 3.5e of D&D.
Mainly, how to make a monster.
Even more-so, HOW DO YOU DETERMINE a monster’s Challenge Rating?
I can’t figure it out for 3.5. I’ve scoured the net trying to find how to determine a custom-made monster’s challenge rating. Please, if you know, help.

I rendered what little help I could, in this reply:

Compare it to existing monsters, trial and error, etc.

There’s not a formula or anything to determine CR.

Also, most of my expertise is in 4th edition

Didn’t think much of it, a little surprised to get a question about third edition, but nonetheless nonplussed. Then I received his followup.

Well, I’m trying to stat out monsters from Final Fantasy. I’m running a Final Fantasy campaign, and the final boss is Yiazmat. His HD is 490,197 with a constitution modifier of +90.
Well, thanks anyway.

I’m going to pause for a moment and let that sink in for you.

I was absolutely flabbergasted by that. I’ve heard of people running ridiculously-powerful games in third edition before, but the sheer scale of this was utterly mind-boggling. I mean, even without knowing what sort of hit dice this boss has, the constitution modifier alone was worth 45 million hit points!

The longer I sat around, the more questions I had, and finally I decided to ask him for an interview. He graciously accepted.

Asmor: Hey, thanks for granting the interview

Matthew: np. My name is Matthew, but my handle is Nexis Firehawk

How would you prefer I address you?

However you want.

Ok, so Matthew, how long have you been running this Final Fantasy campaign?

Well, it’s been in design for well over 5 years.

I actually have several classes that I wrote based on the original classes, including the Dragon Knight (Dragoon), the Archer (hunter), and the Sorcerer Variants Black Mage and Summoner.

I got the urge to make it something more tangible after the release of Final Fantasy : Dissidia.

So, finding players is hard.

So I take it the game hasn’t actually started yet, then?

No, but I’ve got 3/4 of my prep-work done.

The sheer scale of your boss encounter astounds me, and it makes me wonder how much of D&D 3.5 is still recognizable in the game you’ll be playing

So have you had to modify the system a lot?

A little bit. I took the Spell Points variant from Unearthed Arcana. I love that book.

I also learned how to impliment a Materia System from Final Fantasy VII

Your boss you’re designing, Yiazmat, has 490,197 HD. How did you come up with such a specific number, as opposed to for example 490,000 or 500,000?

Because I know what his HP is. It’s (roughly) 50,000,000 HP, and after you know his Constitution score (190), all I had to do was plug in the rest of the numbers. I maxed out his HD for the sheer fun of it, though ^_^.

He actually has 50,000,94 in my game, but the real Yiazmat has about a million more, but I figured what’s a million after THAT MUCH HP?

Indeed. What level are your characters going to be starting at?

Well, considering the fact that it’s a massive, multi-world campaign, I’m starting them off at 4th level.

There are 11 Main Bosses.

Plus, once those are all defeated, the players will have the fun of fighting the 4 weapons from FF VII, Culex, and a special, custom boss I made.

What level, roughly, do you expect the players to reach by the time they fight Yiazmat, and how long do you think that will take them?

Well, I know that the players should gain roughly 6 levels per world, since I’m somewhat tailoring it to them, so I expect them to hit level 60 or 70 easily.

And I ignore the Epic Rules, because the difficulty of this campaign would be too much if I didn’t.

Characters gain levels normally.

How are you doing advancement past level 20, then?

Just normal progression. Effective Caster Level and the like still go up, but the classes and Prestige Classes cap off at their normal maxes, whether it be 20, 10, or 5.

Things with normal, mathematical calculation on how they are achieved (like a fighter’s Bonus Feats or a Monk’s Unarmed AC) still progress normally for things calculated beyond 20th level.

Like, for instance, a 20th level monk with 10 levels of Psionic Fist (aka, Fist of Zuoken).

Then give him a monk’s belt.

In this campaign world, the characters will need every bit they can get.

I can imagine!

Lol.

The main antagonist (not Yiazmat), is actually a deity.

Characters will get to interact with Cloud, Squall, Bartz, and other Heroes from the Final Fantasy Universe, as well as fighting Sephiroth, Sin, Ultimecia, and even Lavos.

Have you considered how long the battle against Yiazmat might take? Even if the characters averaged 10,000 damage a round against him, that would still take 5,000 rounds to kill him. Do you have any way of mitigating the length of that combat?

Actually, yeah. Lots and lots of Mountain Dew. Lol. But seriously, Yiazmat only reaches his height of power when he’s near death (12,000,000 HP), so the first bit of combat should fly pretty quickly.

But I also plan on having Players rolling all their attack die, declaring each one for their six main attacks.

Yes, there isn’t just 4 main hand attacks. There’s 6.

Then they roll for their off-hand attacks.

Then all damage is added up.

Also, all players will be rolling at the same, so there will be a bit of trust between me and them.

Yiazmat actually has a very low AC

It’s a good thing you’re not playing 4th edition, where AC is based on level!

Yeah.

His AC is 42.

Well, anyways, I think you’ve answered all my questions. All I can really say is, “Holy shit.”

I wish you the best of luck in your campaign when it finally gets off the ground!