Encounter-a-Day

The following is a system for running foot races in 4th edition, using athletics and endurance checks (and, optionally, acrobatics checks if hurdles are utilized).

Setup & Goal: First, you’ll need to keep track of two values for each competitor: their distance traveled, and their current penalty. You also need to assign a goal distance, and you may want to place hurdles along the way. For example, for a short sprint you might have a target distance of 100 yards and you might place hurdles at 50 yards and 70 yards.

Penalty: Everyone’s penalty starts off at half their level. This has the effect of keeping competitors of varying levels on roughly even footing, and allows for example a level 1 peasant to outrun a portly, out of shape wizard who just happens to be level 30.

Running the Race The race proceeds in rounds, and each round every competitor gets a turn. Turns are taken in order by distance traveled, with the person who’s traveled the farthest going first. In case of a tie, everyone’s turns happen simultaneously.

Round order

1. You may choose to push yourself this round. If you do, add -2 to your penalty. You may not push yourself on the first round or if you tripped over a hurdle last round. Pushing yourself makes you move farther (see below).
2. Make an athletics check, applying your current penalty. This is the distance you move this round, in yards. If you pushed yourself, increase the result by half. If your normal speed (in squares) is greater than 6, you get a +2 bonus for each extra point of speed beyond 6. Similarly, you take a -2 penalty for each point lower than 6.
3. Make a DC 10 endurance check, applying your current penalty. If you fail this check, add -2 to your penalty. If you fail this check by 5 or more, you move half as many yards next round and cannot push yourself that round either.
4. If you’ve passed a hurdle this round, make a DC 15 acrobatics check, applying your penalty. If you fail this check, you lose any distance gained beyond the hurdle and cannot push yourself next round. For example, if your athletic check moves you from 42 to 60, but there’s a hurdle at 50, you must make an acrobatics check. If you fail this check, your distance is set at 50. A competitor need only ever roll against each hurdle once (e.g. you don’t roll again against it next round), but if you pass multiple hurdles in a single move you must roll against each in turn and stop at the first one you fail (if any).

Winning: The first person to reach the target distance is the winner. In case of a tie for distance, the tied competitors turns occur simultaneously; if several would win at the same time, the winner is the person who went the farthest. If they went an equal distance, the race is a tie!

Strategy: Going first in later rounds is advantageous, as it increases your chances to win. For example, if the goal is 100, you’re at 95, and your opponent is at 94, either of you would probably reach the goal with just one more turn. Since you’re ahead, though, you get to go first so you would win (unless you roll terribly!).

A 100-yard race takes about 4-5 turns, on average, and doesn’t punish you as much for pushing yourself and/or failing endurance checks. A 200-yard race, on the other hand, might take 10-15 rounds, since not only is it twice as long but competitors must also be more conservative when it comes to pushing themselves.

This world has many names. The orcs call it ‘Karn,’ the troglodytes ‘Vorg,’ the gnolls ‘Grath.’ The kobolds refer to the world by its Draconic name, ‘Slistilliath.’

Whatever you call this world, it is unlike any other. Untouched by the great civilizations of man, dwarf or elf, this is a world of wilderness and barbarism, where tribes of monstrous creatures wage constant small-scale wars against their neighbors, and the weak don’t even survive long enough to realize that they are.

Just a preview of a project I’m working on…

I’ve just completed work on Monster Maker 3.0!

This is a big milestone, as I’ve finally got an oft-requested feature implemented. You can not add sections to your monster, such as tactics and knowledge checks. There’s even a button that automatically generates a template for the knowledge checks based on the monster’s origin and level.

If you’ve already used Monster Maker, make sure you copy over your old 4e.css with the new one, as it contains all the info needed for formatting the sections! If you’ve made any customizations to your old 4e.css, you’ll need to re-apply them to this one. Sorry. :/

Another great new feature is that, if you export the HTML to a directory which doesn’t have 4e.css already, the program will offer to copy it there for you. Hopefully this will cut down on people e-mailing me to ask why the thing doesn’t look right.

There were also some minor bug fixes.

The classic dilemma… Nobody wants to play the healer, but it’s very helpful if not outright necessary. Frequently, some DMs run an NPC healer, and that job is made particularly simple thanks to 4th edition! Below, find 6 medics designed to be moderately effective healers, though nowhere near as good as a PC.

Treasure Trove and Quartermaster have both been updated with all the items from Adventurer’s Vault, as well as new UI upgrades necessary thanks to the new kinds of items.

What a pain. I actually typed in every single item in the book… 899 unique items in all.

Well, it’s all downhill from here… Until the Monster Manual 2, I guess.

Fun fact: There are 899 unique items in the Adventurer’s Vault; from every book, magazine article, and adventure released to date, there were a total of ~260 unique items, and 860 total items (counting, for example, +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 and +6 magic weapon has 6 different items).

In other words, there are more unique items in AV than there are total items in everything else that’s been released so far.

And in case you’re wondering, I forgot the exact number, but there are now a total of just over 3200 items in my database.

If anyone’s interested, I uploaded the spreadsheet I made with all these items on ENWorld… here’s the link.

The PCs confront a villain and discover him to be wearing a plain white porcelain mask. The villain is suave and articulate, taunting the PCs even as they defeat him. When the mask is removed– or if it is broken– the man suddenly slumps into a lifeless corpse. Someone with any medical training can easily tell that the body has been dead for some time, days if not weeks.

Not long after, the PCs find another foe, again in a porcelain mask. He clearly remembers the PCs, and from his demeanor and jabs it is clearly the same person. However, when the mask is removed, the same thing happens: it was apparently tied onto a lifeless corpse.

This pattern repeats itself off and on for some time. Depending on your needs, the PCs might find clues leading to the true villain’s identity by searching the dead bodies, or he might remain concealed for years, popping up when opportune to stymie your players.

I’ve updated the Monster Maker to version 2.4.

New feature in this version: you can now import powers and auras from other monsters, so if you’re making several similar monsters you can save keystrokes and help ensure consistency.

Also fixed some minor bugs.

I’ve finished updating Treasure Trove and Quartermaster so that you can filter by types of weapons, kind of like with armor.

It seems like a small feature, but due to the complicated and hierarchical nature of the weapons and groups, it was a fun challenge and I’m satisfied with the way it came out.

Right now I’m working on implementing code so that Treasure Trove and Quartermaster can be filtered by types of weapons, like armor.

Of course, there’s way, way more options for filtering weapons than there are armor… Armor is pretty cut and dry, it’s one of 6 different types. Weapons have a relatively complicated hiererarchy, where each weapon can be contained in multiple different groups (e.g. a halberd is a 2-handed melee weapon, an axe, and a polearm), and there are even some strange special cases (specifically the shuriken– the only light blade ranged weapon).

I’ve actually come up with a relatively simple solution, and now it’s a matter of just slogging through and coding everything. It’s also going to be a pain to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to lay this stuff out when I do add it to those programs… The list is going to be very long and difficult to manage. Not sure exactly how I’ll handle that. I’m thinking one list for the weapon groups, and one list for individual weapons might break it up nicely.

For those curious, here’s what I’ve got so far:

http://www.asmor.com/scripts/4eMagicItems/weaponGroupTest.html