Jester's 4e Ravenloft Pamphlet

[Jester of the FoS]

Jester's 100% Unofficial 4th Edition D&D rules for Ravenloft

Available on the main page:
http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/Libr ... l#jester4e

4e DM Rules
Letter
Landscape

Tables and charts Cheat Sheet:
Cheat Sheet

Player's Guide
Letter
Landscape

Monsters
Monsters

3e Dream Rules
http://www.box.net/shared/yxi9ve1c8k

The documents are also available via e-mail upon request (send PM, e-mail, or post on this thread).

I wanted to post this after WotC released their fansite policy. However, at the date of this latest revision (09/26/08 ) the fansite policy has *still* not been released (making it 3 1/2 months -almost 4- since the edition's release).

In their current incarnations, my guides do not follow the GSL, but that licence explicitly does not apply to free online products. The violations are both overt (mentioning races/classes/monsters not currently listed in SRD) and subtle (using the new planes albeit under a different name).
If, after the date of this writing, WotC releases a fansite policy that prevents this document's publication I'll remove or revise it.



-Updates-
September 15, 2009
Uploaded latest revisions.
August 28, 2009
Posted preview of revised Player's Guide.
February 2, 2009
Posted Monster book.
Added minor copyright fix to Player's Guide and Rule's Pamphlet.
December 21, 2008
Added backgrounds to the Player's Guide for major domains/regions.
December 13, 2008
Technical update, bookmarks added to the pdf.
November 23rd, 2008
Added the Mist Pact warlock to the Player's Guide and added two new Paragon paths for the warlock and three feats.
Also added minor revisions to Witchhunter PP due to feedback.
Other minor typographic edits.
November 5th, 2008
Added 3e Dream rules
October 8, 2008
Added Mist Pact warlock to post. I should eventually add it to the player's guide (but need names for credits first).
September 26, 2008
Many revisions of the Player's Guide including adding several new magic items as well as revising the arcanist's rebuke power and the pistoleer's specialization. Plus the addition of two new racial notes (no new racial rules).
Also added the landscape version of the PG.
Any many typo corrections.
August 26, 2008
Revised the players' guide changing several feat (second sight became sixth sense, ghost sight became second sight and adjusted redheaded, reincarnated) and adding a new one.
Added a new paragon path, new ritual and tiny addition to the giomorgo.
Corrected numerous typos but still many left...
August 19, 2008
Minor formatting
Added Player's Guide
July 27, 2008
version 1.02
Corrected DCs in madness and curses to reflect WotC's errata
Corrected some formatting nitpicks
Corrected ToC in landscape
Added Cheatsheet

[Jester of the FoS]

If anyone would prefer it e-mailed just ask.
ScS is on vacation now, but I'll ask him to stick it somewhere on the site when he comes back.

[Pamela]

Thank you very much for this, Jester!

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Interesting! It's making me more hopeful of RL continuing into the new edition, that's for sure. I like what you did with sanity points and madness as a mental disease.

Is there a reason you omitted "female" from the list of curse check mods?

[Jester of the FoS]

Interesting! It's making me more hopeful of RL continuing into the new edition, that's for sure. I like what you did with sanity points and madness as a mental disease.

Is there a reason you omitted "female" from the list of curse check mods?

I might do a "my reasons" post later for a handful of things.
Really, I just didn't feel being female was enough of a modifier. A scorned male lover should be just as problematic. There's that tiny hint of sexism: that women need this supernatural power to revenge themselves.
A lengthy chart of modifiers varying the chance based on age, race, gender, etc just makes things more complicated.

[Jester of the FoS]

Hrm... looking through my files, I just realized I didn't update the ToC between drafts. I'll have to double check but the page numbers are probably crazy-off for the landscape version...

I'll also have to update the DCs of the madness and curse checks to reflect the latest errata from WotC. They completely overhauled DCs and skill challenges, and I just realized I forgot to fix those as well.
D'oh, I knew I should have waited until tomorrow...

[Jester of the FoS]

Thoughts:
I had a couple design goals for these rules
1) Make the rules simple and usable. I didn't want them to be complicated or require constant reference to the document and the rules.
2) Make the rules work with 4e. No major additions or revisions to what has been established in the rulebooks.

Fear and Horror
This was *heavily* reviewed and revised by Nikolas of the Mists.
Basically, I wanted fear and horror to be similar to traps and hazards in that they added to combat but were entirely separate and essentially an add-on.
Given the removal of saves, I didn't want to resort to a saving throw or additional mechanic.

And having fear and horror being related to the monster just meant that tougher monsters would almost always inspire fear and would essentially give them a free attack. And when confronted by large numbers of monsters (for example: many, many minions) the odds were against the PCs.

I didn't want a laundry-list of possible results from fear and horror. I wanted binary result: you were afraid or you were not.

I seriously considered adding a new condition named "shaken" or "frightened" which would be the result of fear&horror and could also be used by new monsters and curses/madness. But I felt it would just overlap with existing conditions. I wanted to add Ravenloft rules, not new PHB rules.

Madness
I used the disease rules for madness because it made perfect sense. Madness is mental illness. It allowed for a nice progression, with people growing worse or getting better and simple.
And the disease track also makes most madnesses suitable for all levels; just change the DCs and it's a suitable for your PC. And it allows DMs to use published diseases as psychosomatic illness increasing available madnesses.

You can thank Nikolas for the term "Sanity". I struggled over names like mental points and mind points before he suggested I just go with the Call of Cthulu Sanity name.
Unlike 3e Sanity, I didn't want a big stack of points that could easily number in the hundreds because that would require many, many things to lower one's sanity. A small sanity score that went up and down makes it more dynamic. If the GM wants to deal with madness in a story it only takes one or two good sanity-draining monsters or events to knock someone down.
At the same time, GMs who don't want madness creeping into their current adventure can just be selective with their fear and horror checks or careful with monster selection.

Curses
I settled on the disease track for curses because I wanted something simple and familiar. I didn't want curses to be a hard, static penalty; there's not alot that imposes a negative on PCs in 4e for longer than an encounter.

For the modifiers, I tried to limit them to situation. The reason for curses always seemed more interesting than the individual (with the exception of the Vistani).

The hardest part was the attack. I didn't want curses to be automatic, and I felt the attacker should have to roll, but this really limited curses to opponents of equal level to the PC. The Cha + 1/2 target's level was the best compromise I could do.

[Jester of the FoS]

Powers Checks
This was really hard.

I'd been toying around with new Powers checks mechanics for a while. I was never happy with the 3e version, unchanged since Forbidden Lore since it didn't seem to work with any of the darklords who had failed checks and the chance of failure was so random. It went from 1% to 5% to 10% to 100%.
It was exceptionally problematic since there's no mechanic in 4e that uses percentile dice.

I though long and hard about how to use a d20, which always went up in 5% increments. Doubling the dice and allowing two chances to fail essentially halved the % and made it more in line with the old system. I originally paired the Power's perception check with a saving throw (10+ and you shake off the check) but I really didn't like characters being able to save against the Dark Powers.

The solution was easy: if there are fewer checks made then the chance of failure is always less. If GMs only make a check where there's a reasonable chance of failure then fewer checks need to be made and the system can be simple.
So I dumped the big-ass list of what does and does not require a check and just gave some advice and left it up to GMs. I mean, we've all seen the "Does this require a Powers check??" threads, now the answer is simple: you're the DM, what do you think?

I tried to keep the check itself simple. There had to be modifier but I limited them to motive. This has always been a tense issue because "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and some people really dislike meaning well and trying to do right getting people off from evil deeds. But while I agree that the ends don't justify the means doing the wrong thing for the right reasons does tend to be better than doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

I had some fun-fun discussions with Nathan about failure from checks. I like point systems and the accumulation of points. It seemed better than the failure = next step system, where it took one strike before you were cursed. I wanted static numbers but Nathan found that too logical for the Powers, so I settled on random dice with the severity of the crime dictating the number of dice (and thus the number of points).

So it's a funky system where stealing from nuns and robbing the rich both have the same chance of failure (ignoring motive) but one leaves a larger stain on the soul.

[Jester of the FoS]

Corruption
A brain-storm I had a while back, before 4e was announced, was different forms of corruption. Originally I had just planned three: mind, body, and soul. I thought this would be a way to explain essentially human lords (Malken, d'Honaire).

But when I stole bits of Nathan's (brilliant) Unified Theory of Power Checks
here
I took his four categories of crime: Violence, Betrayal, Blasphemy, and Black Magic. I wanted to tie each to a type of corruption and eventually settled on physical, social, spiritual and mental corruption. And with two extremes to each form of corruption its instantly eight types of Powers checks results.

Dark Gifts
This was also really, really hard. Of all the elements this required the most balance.
4e doesn't lend itself to bonuses paired with penalties, but there's really no other way to do the blessing/curse combo. The Taint system from 3e is one variation, but as entirely negative there's no real encouragement to give into temptation: characters are good because the players have a fear of punishment and penalty. Likewise, I wanted to avoid the 3e Ravenloft system where it was easy to rack up bonuses through some simple sinning and become more powerful.

I wanted the initial bonuses to be small. Helpful and interesting, yet not game-breaking.

The later powers still cause me to have doubts. 4e really doesn't have many things that add to the number of powers a character can do each day. Most feats just offer more alternatives or grant new powers that can be gained by trading out old ones.
But I felt having access to a new power, even a slightly more powerful one, wasn't enough of a benefit. So I bent 4e and gave out additional powers... at a cost. And as utility powers they're helpful, but not likely to break the game... hopefully.

The World
I debated a lengthy list of modified powers and altered rituals... but who has the time?
Really, altering powers just slows down play. I do not want people having to consult my pamphlet mid-combat to see if their warlock can teleport someone into hell or if an eladrin can miststep. The last thing I want is GM's flipping through my stuff in the middle of a round and slowing down the game.
So I just set down some rough guidelines that should really only affect rituals.

The Planes was awkward, as there is really no planar information in the 4e books. Worlds and Monsters has six or seven times as much information than the DMG. And the WotC planar names (feywild, shadowfell) are not part of the SRD so they *technically* cannot be named. So I renamed them all (feywild = faerie, shadowfell = the Pale).
Personally, I'm proud of my take on the Shadow Rift, I think it makes that land more interesting.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Bravo, Jester and Nikolas (and everyone who contributed.) Very well done.

Honestly, on first read-through, there was a lot that bothered me. But after reading your "designer notes," I came to realize that all the stuff I didn't like were "features" of 4e in general that I personally don't like, not problems in your rules. So with that in mind, I think you did an excellent job of staying within the bounds and design tenets of 4e (as far as I understand them with my limited 4e knowledge), while preserving RL flavor as much as possible.

One thing that still bothers me a little is the sanity point system. I like madness as a disease (something that might be worth porting back to 3e, actually. Are those state diagrams a standard mechanic for disease in 4e or your own invention?). But sanity has the same problem that HP always had: There's no ill effect of losing sanity until you hit 0. As I said, I don't know 4e much at all, but didn't they introduce "bloodied" as a condition when you've lost some percentage of your hp? Maybe there could be a similar term ("disturbed" maybe? "unhinged"?) for sanity that goes below a certain threshold?

I really like the Int vs will idea for fear. The perfect way to describe it, IMHO. The only other thing that still bothers me is that I'm not sure it's the same for horror. With fear, your willpower lets you stand your ground when your better judgment says to flee. With horror, it's still willpower to withstand it, but I'm not sure if Int is the best attack value. How can you define your own "sense of the way the world should be" in D&D? Is that more of a Wis or Cha, maybe? I'd almost go with Cha, because the more accustomed you are to the world listening to you, the more unnerving it would be when it doesn't. Does that make some sort of sense?


But again, overall, a great document, and just what we need to keep RL from languishing in the past (like me ) until official 4e RL stuff comes out. Thanks for all your effort!

[Jester of the FoS]

Are those state diagrams a standard mechanic for disease in 4e or your own invention?).

The disease tracks are right out of the DMG and MM, albeit with different arrows and fonts.

But sanity has the same problem that HP always had: There's no ill effect of losing sanity until you hit 0. As I said, I don't know 4e much at all, but didn't they introduce "bloodied" as a condition when you've lost some percentage of your hp? Maybe there could be a similar term ("disturbed" maybe? "unhinged"?) for sanity that goes below a certain threshold?

Could. But there are no real penalties to being bloodied. It sometimes lets abilities activate and sometimes lets you use new powers. So an "Unsound" mechanic wouldn't do much unless I added it to a whole wack of monsters.
But unlike hp and bloodied, sanity only affects PCs so it's another thing that only hurts them and only applies to them. So it's almost mean to have additional effects.

But there could be an optional rule that lowers your will defence, or grants a bonus to fear/horror checks. But that would only encourage people to rest when close to "unhinged" and regain sanity. And we'd lose situations where people just snap without warning.

I really like the Int vs will idea for fear. The perfect way to describe it, IMHO. The only other thing that still bothers me is that I'm not sure it's the same for horror. With fear, your willpower lets you stand your ground when your better judgement says to flee. With horror, it's still willpower to withstand it, but I'm not sure if Int is the best attack value.

Well, in theory it's still the mind attacking itself, with the imagined pre-conceived notions reacting with the actual situation.
Mechanically though, I went with Int for two reasons:

Firstly, because it was simpler. If they were different there might be some confusion or forgetting which is which.

Secondly, because Int and Will defence are not linked.
High int classes tend to have a high wisdom or charisma or bonuses to Will defence but there's still some variance (characters with high int, low will or low int and high will).
Cha/Wis vs Will reduces the variance and means people will often be attacking the defence with its tied ability and have greater odds of failure (1-9 miss, 10+ hit). Or, worse, they'll be attacking a defence with a dump stat (since you don't need both cha and wis for many classes).

[Mouseferatu]

I haven't read this in detail yet, but on initial look, it's very impressive. I'm particularly impressed with your use of existing 4E mechanics to model Ravenloft aspects, like the disease track for sanity. Absolutely brilliant.

[Snake]

Oh if only my work didn't block your hosting site Jester. I'll have to check it at home if I have time.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

One thing I have really strived for on 4E is keeping stuff encapsulated (see that -- I even used the useless programming courses on my transcript for something ).

I felt it was the most important factor in creating something for RL because, more than any other campaign setting, this one follows a "take what you want" GM attitude.

I have a 2 week break from my job coming up soon, so hopefully I will be able to final edit and crank out the PDFs for Lycanthropy, Vistani/Half-Vistani, Caliban, and an alternate mechanic for 4E Dark Powers checks. And a new sidebat/commentary on gnomes. Almost forgot about them.

[Snake]

Wow amazing job Jester. I will definitely implement this if I run a 4th edition game in Ravenloft.