jacinto LotFP, play report, san serafín

San Serafín Play Report #1

Keeping track of the necropolis exploration game I’m DMing.

The Suspects
Sarro the Wandering Swordsman: searching for a beast to bind to his service

Joaquin the Monk: sent to retrieve the soul of a saint from the city.

Ankara the Skull Elf: looking for a particular necklace lost in San Serafín

San Serafín is a giant cursed city sunken into a mountainside, inhabited by Devils and the Dead. Our intrepid adventurers arrived early in the morning, and upon entering the city from the east, decided to follow Sarro’s lead and head north. They very quickly encountered a huge ursine figure wearing a mask, with a basket strapped to its back. Sarro proposed a pact and the creature approached, speaking in a language that made everyone’s noses bleed. When nobody understood, it produces a chained human translator from the basket, who explained the beast was the 72nd Sky Devil, and it was interested in forming a pact, but first required Sarro to demonstrate his worthiness with a task.

Sarro instead demanded that the devil prove its power. It responded by summoning a torrential downpour. When Sarro pressed it for yet more demonstration, the 72nd Sky Devil proposed to prove Sarro’s worth and demonstrate its own power through combat, and then attacked. Sarro’s companions helped him fight the devil, but they ignored the growing glow of its internal fire until it vomited a fatal torrent of flame on Sarro, at which point Joaquin and Ankara surrendered.

The Devil demanded 100 days of service, and after some hedging, the surviving party members agreed. The 72nd Sky Devil gave them directions to “one of this city’s nobility” and told them to kill the aristocrat and retrieve a certain scroll in their possession. On the way, they stumbled across a small band of humans, but Ankara got off to the wrong start by mentioning they were working for a devil, and the band attacked. A crossbowman (Sarro’s replacement), sent by the 72nd Skt Devil to aid them, intervened, but the party was outnumbered and quickly fell, despite some impressive maneuvers on Joaquin’s part. The party rolled up new characters and we called it a night.

For next time
The Background/skill system I posted earlier worked nicely, but I think I need to include a canonical list of backgrounds.

I have no good way of seeding treasure throughout the city. Need to make a generator for that.

I need custom equipment tables. Six-shooters, flashlights, radios. I think I want to base armor on brands, so like the Gatiko label makes light armor and Dolores makes all the plate.

A good rumor table would be really handy also. The players don’t know as much about San Serafín as their characters should.

I need to flesh out the town that’s a sort of base camp for San Serafín explorers. Right now it’s empty and boring.

The city needs to be a little denser, I think. Too much going on in empty streets. I do like how the monsters as written all have immediate and easy to DM motivations, so even simple encounters complicate the PC’s relationship with the city. The very first encounter landed the party in hot water and 100 days of servitude to a fire-breathing jaguar devil.

jacinto classes, LotFP, san serafín

righteous punching for justice

Early edition monks manage to be both incredibly boring and hideously complicated. Later editions are just kind of enhh. I want something 1. simple 2. wuxia-ish 3. appropriate in terms of power level for old school D&D. Here’s a try.

Monk, a class for old school D&D

HP, XP, Attack Bonus, and Saving Throws as cleric. In LotFP, monks receive the non-fighter attack bonus, but only suffer a -2 penalty to attack rolls or AC when they Press or Parry. They also learn two Techniques of their choice and invention (and Referee’s approval) every level.

Techniques allows monks to recreate the effects of a particular weapon or armor their bare hands. A monk who has mastered the Hundredweight Hand (Battleaxe) technique can chop lumber, bash through doors, and deal battleaxe damage just with the edges of their hands.

Techniques bring all the advantages and disadvantages of the weapon or armor, so if it mimics a two-handed weapon, a technique requires two free hands. If a technique mimics plate armor, the monk must move as slowly as if they were in heavy armor to maintain the effect. Also, armor-based techniques require the monk to limber up for as long as it would take to don armor of the same AC.

All techniques must be be justifiable fictionally. A monk with the Heron Fist (Spear) technique could use it to probe for traps (as someone with an actual spear might) and claim to avoid the pitfall or whatever by virtue of the technique’s speed. But they couldn’t use it to hook the guard’s keys off her belt from far away. 

Oh, and players get to make up names for their techniques.

I’d suggest being generous for techniques that are odd/interesting/useful in non-obvious ways and conservative with techniques that are very powerful and direct (e.g. a technique based on heavy artillery). Here are a few weirder possibilities for starters:

  • Heavenly Kick (javelin): The monk can jump as far as they can throw a javelin, dealing damage to whatever they kick/land on.
  • Pure Flame Technique (torch): The monk’s punch deals d6 fire damage and ignites anything flammable
  • Bone Cage Technique (net): struck enemy counts as heavily encumbered until they take an action to steady themselves.
  • Armor Peeler (gun): Ignores AC bonus from armor. Only usable in melee range.
  • Blessed Palm (holy water): counts as holy water for damage (so it deals 0 damage against regular creatures and harm undead). Only usable in melee range.  
  • Cursed Fist (magic weapon): Counts as a magic weapon for purposes of damage immunity and reduction.
  • Empty Hand Shield (shield): +1 AC as long as the monk keeps one hand free

So ideally you have an unarmed and unarmored warrior encouraged to use a combination of lateral thinking and direct confrontation in their fights, with enough weird talents that they can be of use in that crazy heist the party has just planned.

jacinto demon, LotFP, monsters, san serafín

care to guess my name


They were the gods of the beasts, but grew decadent and cunning with the passing of time. They fell, finally and irreversibly, when they gave themselves names and rose to walk on two legs. Now, they are rejected by the wild and spurned by civilization. They have retreated to San Serafín where they wage a glacial and mostly invisible war on the dead. 

The greatest of their number is Madama Yaguar, the first beast to hunt and the first being to kill. She is sick now, and will teach the secrets of her illness to the strong


The forms of the devils are confused, they are furred and scaled and feathered and fanged. They hide their shapes in ragged finery and ivory masks and golden wire armatures. 

If defeated or entreated, the may agree to form a pact with an adventurer. To do so, the signatory character must sacrifice 15% of the XP needed to reach the next level. They learn the devil’s true name, and can summon it at any time with 1 turn of effort.

Once summoned, a devil makes a reaction roll. If it doesn’t try to eat everybody, the signatory can ask it for a favor. It might demand a service, a soul, or a burnt offering, depending on its Reaction.

DOMAINS
Signatories can ask a devil to perform a favor pertaining to its domain.

  1. Wealth Devil: Will sell you anything on the standard equipment list for 10 times the original price.
  2. Weather Devil: Will change the weather to anything you wish for one day, as long as it is appropriate for the local climate (so no snowstorms in deserts)
  3. Weapon Devil: Will sell you any standard weapon for 10 times the original price. +1 to damage and +1 to hit for 24 hours.
  4. Desire Devil: has power over a single random MU spell with a spell level of 1d4. It can grant the ability to cast it once to a single person. It can grant the ability to cast more spells by eating scrolls.
  5. Warfare Devil: will fight for you until it fails a Morale/Loyalty check. Loyalty/Morale is 2+signatory’s level. Warfare devils do not fear being outnumbered.
  6. Beauty Devil: Will change the Morale of all hirelings to 11 for a day, but failure means they have become enamored with the beauty devil and will henceforth follow its wishes in all things.
  7. Ascended Devil: Will grant three Wishes. They can be made one at a time or all at once, with any amount of time between them. Once it has granted them all, the pact terminates and it will try to kill you.
  8. Blood Devil: Will make a creature at 0 or fewer HP immune to damage for a day or until they reach 1 or more HP.
  9. Knowledge Devil: Has a 4 in 6 chance of truthfully and correctly answering any yes or no question asked of it.
  10. Truth Devil: Will enforce any oath made in its presence. Should any party break the oath, the Truth Devil will do all in its power to kill them. 

STATS
When in a pact, devils add half their signatory’s level to their HD. They can cast spells as a MU with half as many levels as they have HD. The appearance of all devils is similar, but they have stats as one of the following creatures.

  1. Medusa (can turn into an azure jay)
  2. Immature Red Dragon (can turn into a jaguar)
  3. Earth elemental (can turn into a caiman)
  4. Banshee (can turn into a howler monkey)
  5. Werewolf (can turn into a maned wolf)
  6. Harpy (can turn into a dolphin)
jacinto classes, LotFP, new age dnd, san serafín, type v

having the time of your life

Been playing Shantae. Aggressively nostalgic, exceedingly Crayola, surprisingly excellent. Been have interested in playing it since it came out for the Game Boy Color. Anyway, it has me thinking about dancing. Also been thinking about Gus L’s Imperial Cultists. So here’s a prancing bardlike that mashes the two together.

from Etrian Odyssey


Dancers

from black swan

HP, attack bonus and XP as Cleric. Saves and Equipment as Thief.

Dancers perform magic dances, which aren’t memorized and forgotten like spells–they can be attempted as often as the dancer wishes.

Each Dance function like Lamentations of the Flame Princess skill. You start out with a 1-in-6 chance of succeeding on checks pertaining to the relevant dance, but you can increase the odds of success with skill points. At level 1, you start out with 4 skill points to allocate however you wish; every time you level up, you gain 2 more. You can only improve Dances you’ve learned, naturally. A Dance cannot exceed a 5-in-6 chance of success. If all of this is too complicated for you, just use the thief’s Hear Noise skill odds for all known dances.

Dances always work, but for every turn you perform a Dance, you must make a check with the relevant skill. If you succeed, you continue your performance unfazed; if you fail, you take a level of exhaustion. (There are a lot of ways to do this. In my games, for each level of exhaustion, you suffer a -1 penalty to all attribute, attack, and skill rolls, and move as if you were encumbered by an additional level. If you roll a negative number on a roll while exhausted or reach a movement speed of 0, you fall unconscious for d4 Turns. Eating a ration and resting for a Turn removes one level of exhaustion.) When you are dancing, you move no faster than 30′. If you are struck by an attack while dancing, you must make a Save vs Breath or end the dance.

from Shantae

Dances
You begin play knowing two Mysterious Dances dances. To acquire more, you must find them in your travels. Learning a dance from a tutor takes a week. Learning a dance from written instructions takes a month.

Mysterious Dances

  • Arson Dance: When you perform this dance indoors, no fire within that structure can be extinguished until you leave or stop dancing. This may work in a limited area (such as a single story or wing) in very large buildings. 
  • Vorpal Dance: This dance ends by tracing a finger or toe across a flat surface. This creates a cut with a depth in inches equal to twice the number of turns you danced, regardless of material. 
  • Murder Dance: For each round you perform this dance, every creature that can see you takes d6 necrotic damage as they slowly crumble to dust; they can Save vs Spell for half damage
  • Scandal Dance: Any creature that sees you perform this dance must Save vs Spells or pay attention to nothing else but you for as long as you continue to dance. This does not change its disposition towards you. 
  • Shatter Dance: Completing this dance breaks every mundane piece of glass within a number of feet equal to 10 times the number of Turns spent dancing.  
  • Dark Dance: Completing this dance extinguishes every torch, lamp, or other light source within a number of feet equal to 10 times the number of Turns spent dancing.

Forbidden Dances
Known to no one. Can only be learned from forgotten texts.

  • Bone Dance: animates a number of HD of undead equal to half your level, rounded up. They obey your spoken commands until you stop dancing, at which point they go berserk.
  • Wind Dance: As per Stormspeech. Lasts until you stop dancing. 
  • Dance of Monstrosity: As per Summon. Replace all mention of caster level with number of turns spent dancing.
  • Dance of Change: When you complete this dance, you may polymorph into a mundane animal of your choice with HD equal to or less than half your level. The transformation lasts for as long as you danced or until you choose to revert to your true form. 
  • Immolation Dance: Performing this dance sets you on fire and makes you immune to all heat and flame. Any creature in melee range of you takes d6 damage, and you ignite every flammable thing you pass by. Ceasing to dance ends your immunity to heat, but it doesn’t douse you. 
  • Prominence Dance: For as long as you perform this dance, the Sun shines overhead as if it were noon. Only works outdoors
  • Nocturne Dance: For as long as your perform this dance, the sky darkens and the stars shine as if it were midnight. Only works outdoors.
from Magi

So the idea behind all of this is you have multiple pressures on the character, most of which revolve around the overloaded encounter die/Hazard System.

  • Rations encumber you, but let you reduce exhaustion.
  • Exhaustion reduces the amount of stuff you can carry (including rations) and makes you more likely to fail dances, which exhausts you more
  • Dancing takes time, which makes encounters and complications more likely, which might require more dances to resolve.
  • Armor makes it safer to use dances in combat, but leaves you less room for rations and makes you even slower while you dance.
    jacinto adventures, afternoon espresso, angels, megadungeon murder mystery, monsters, san serafín, table

    XIII

    This is kind of an experiment. Every session there is a 1 in 6 chance of one of these things coming up or being mentioned or whatever. It’s a conspiracy generator. Not the best format, but it was fun to write so whatever.

    by Dominic Alves, distributed under CC

    I
    There is a god, and its name is Thirteen. It is the lord of inversion and the architect of misfortune; its clerics wear yellow and hold power over doppelgangers, oozes, and devils. The Constables hunt its worshipers like animals, but there always seems to be more.

    by Jerry Kirkhart, distributed under CC

    II
    There is a society, and nobody knows its name or its members. Everyone who matters has gone to one of their parties–they only invite thirteen people at a time, and it’s terribly difficult to secure an invitation. Sometimes people don’t come back, but that just makes it all the more exciting, doesn’t it?

    III
    There is a city where nobody goes, a city of sepulchers, a city by the sea. You can’t find it on a map, and no matter how far you travel, you won’t ever reach it. Some priests say the gods cut it out of this world like a tumor, but if you take a certain route, passing through certain cursed doorways and traversing certain cursed crossroads, you will arrive on one of its thirteen grand avenues, which intersect in the center like a spider’s web or a perverse star. The dead hang by cables from the telephone wires.

    IV
    There is a man by the side of the road, and he is shouting at you. He speaks of an angel with thirteen wings and a hydra with thirteen heads. He says he will be dead soon, but this is a thing that you all must know.

    V
    You found a book about a crow with thirteen eyes, scattered across its face like any ugly constellation. It is terrible old and utterly malign: a colossal rival of dragons, a gleeful anthropophage, a bearer of curses. It steals children from their parents, raises them and loves them with all its evil heart. They don’t grow up human.

    by Anne-Sophie Leens, distributed under CC

    VI
    There is a syndicate with thirteen captains. They traffic in drugs, slaves, and precious metals; they are undercutting just about every major player in the city. Nobody can figure out who their suppliers are, or where their shipments are coming from, but everyone wants them gone. The Weaver’s Guild has placed a colossal bounty on the heads of their leaders, but it’s only resulted in a lot of dead assassins.

    VII
    Somebody murdered a Saint of Honey and Salt, carving a thirteen-pointed star into their chest. The local House has promised blood, and rumor has it they’ve had to purge their ranks of spies, though the details are fuzzy on who they were working for.

    VIII
    This buried and desecrated temple is the home to thirteen warlocks:

    • Gog and Magog, the hateful witch-children, each of which draws magic from the other
    • Illhammer, who casts spells with a mace fashioned from a devil’s femur
    • The Perfect Child of Man, who wears a yellow hood. The emissary of a god-city exiled from this world
    • Ratbelly, the red eyed waif, bound by her own oaths to the Forbidden Hour, which once sat between midnight and 1 a.m
    • Catbelly: the neurasthenic malefic, carried on a silk palanquin by 5 horned skeletons and empowered by a devil of smoke and blue fire
    • Murderboy: he walks on ceilings and weeps black tar; he was raised by a spider the size of a school bus that still sings him to sleep
    • Toothgirl: a creeping obsessive, built a god of neon tubes and rat bones that tells her who to kill
    • Gurn: she can unhinge her jaw like a snake and spit out almost anything she wants; cursed by her mother to be killed by a weapon of her own making.
    • Mammon: everything he does looks awkward and wrong, like a dog walking on its hind legs or a man running on all fours. A centipede lives in his clothes that teaches him the secrets of secret-eating and memory-killing
    • Nadir: wild haired troglodyte who lives at the bottom of a hole, which moves around when nobody’s looking. Sold her soul to a gravity angel, so she can’t pick herself off the ground.
    • Maculata: jelly-fleshed voyeur with a visible skeleton; holds congress with puddings, oozes, and jellies of all sorts.
    • Maastricht: a wretched old man with metal teeth, his pact with Satan makes him nigh omnipotent; his secret weakness is that he can only move when you’re looking at him

    IX
    There’s a series of thirteen pamphlets everyone’s reading. They make you remember things you’d forgotten, give you advice that makes you feel smart and capable and stronger, they make you forget your own inadequacy and weakness and stupidity, they make you want to find the other pamphlets, but they’re so hard to find and you can’t figure out where they come from. Everyone says something wonderful happens if you read all thirteen.

    I’m tired of writing now. I’ll probably write more and I want to find a d13 for this.

    jacinto assassins, classes, is this gonna work, LotFP, monks, san serafín

    Love and War

    Having taken a closer look at Swords and Wizardry Complete, I have come to the conclusion that assassins are boring and monks are dumb. This is somewhat inspired by +Arnold K.‘s excellent post on void monks.

    Saint of Honey and Salt
    a class for old school D&D-likes

    HP and XP as Magic-users
    Attack bonus and saves as Clerics

    Also called Las Basiliscas, the Velvet People, Pretty Poisoners, Beauty Monks

    Each major city has a House of Honey and Salt, which acts as the home and headquarters of all Saints in the region. These Houses are temple-brothel-hospitals; few injuries or illnesses are beyond the flesh-crawling curatives of the Saints, though they charge a high price.

    Saints are the enemies of the medusae, the drow, and the Weaver’s Guild. Their cousins are the vampires. They have treaties with the basilisks, dryads, nymphs, succubi, and shadows. Saints make servants of bees and flesh golems.

    Saints have a reputation for espionage, though nobody knows where their interests lie. They’re that good. A nation’s monarch having a Saint in their court is viewed the same way as having a child king or a doddering regent: a sign of instability and bad things to come.

    The dogma of the Saints is Love and their doctrine is Spite. A Saint cannot wield weapons and must avoid inflicting pain wherever possible (This is interpreted liberally. The Saints as an organization make extensive use of poisons, and have no problem telling their underlings to do exceedingly painful things to their enemies). Saints also cannot wear armor, as it conceals their bodies.

    from full metal alchemist

    A Saint is like this:
    You’re always a little flushed, a little feverish, though you never seem to sweat. The whites of your eyes have no blood vessels, you tongue and lips are red; your hair is albino white or the iridescent black of crow feathers or else it shines like the sun on the sea etc etc. You look like the fervid imaginings of a court poet or a Raymond Chandler character or the lover of a hero from antiquity.

    • While you suffer the physical effects of old age like anyone else, you always appear to be in the full flush of youth. 
    • You are thoroughly trained in the arts of dancing, singing, and/or acting. 
    • Your Charisma score increases by 1 every time you gain a level, to a maximum 18. If you wish, you can use your Charisma score in place of your armor class.
    • You can make somebody’s blood weep painlessly out of their skin by touching them, flesh to flesh. A hand’s worth of coverage deals d6 damage (and requires an attack roll in combat, assuming they aren’t completely covered). More area of contact deals more damage, to a maximum of d20. This makes grappling with you very dangerous. Looks sort of like this:
    by Bernypisa, distributed under Creative Commons

    Level 2: Sweet Nothings
    You can cast Suggestion at will by whispering into somebody’s ear for a full round, close enough that they can feel your breath on their face.

    Level 3: Fascination

    You can Charm someone by kissing them. They must be willing or restrained, and they get a saving throw. People Charmed in this way become obsessive, withdrawn, feverish, and Detect as Chaotic and/or Evil.
    Level 4: Fountain of Youth
    During downtime, you can prepare a special bath of animal hormones, plant extracts, and generally weird drugs that

    • cures diseases
    • restores lost limbs
    • removes deformities, like scars, tumors, and dermal fungal colonies

    This bath costs 1,000 gp and works for a single person. You might have trouble finding the ingredients in backwater areas, though you can haul them around if you so choose; they count as 2 significant items. 

    Level 5: Carnation

    You can spend a downtime action to change your appearance. You can’t radically alter your body plan (so you can’t become a quadruped or grow new limbs or change your arms to wings) or mimic a particular person, but you can change your build, posture, sex, pigmentation, and so on. 

    Level 6: Pretty Poison

    If you consume a poison or drug and survive, you become immune to its effects. Furthermore, consuming a poison or drug to which you are immune allows you to preserve it in your body for d6 Turns. Anything that eats you (or at least a significant chunk) isn’t going to be feeling so great after, and your bodily fluids work as a contact poison of the same type, though victims get a +3 to saving throws against it in this form. Saint Malvada defeated the Blue Iron King by spitting into his eye, then getting his pet dragon to eat her arm.

    Level 7:
    You can read someone’s mind as per ESP by staring into their eyes for a full round. They can feel you reading their mind, so usually they must be restrained or otherwise unable to look away. 

    Level 8: All Shall Love Me and Despair
    Once a day, you can issue a Mass Command. (As Command, but afflicts everyone in earshot)

    Level 9: House of Honey and Salt
    You found your own House of Honey and Salt and gain 2d6 disciples.

    Level 10: Only Lovers Left Alive
    Once per day, you can kill someone with fewer HD than you have levels by touching their bare chest with your forefinger. No save.

    christian dior
    from fire emblem awakening