20 Balls of Fire: Spheres of Blazing Death HackMaster Style

Inspired by Rients' rant about fireballs from a few weeks back--and simultaneously filling in a glaring omission in Delta Dan's Spells Through the Ages Series--I decided to investigate the numerous versions of every one's favorite spell of incendiary devastation in the most beloved of all editions of D&D: HackMaster!

That's right, HackMaster has 20 different Fireball spells, at least 2 are available at each spell level (except 7th, which gets but one).  Yes, there are not one but two versions available to Prestifidigitatarions. And in case you have to ask: yes they're all "volumetric" and you will roast your party and yourself if you cast one in tight quarters.   

1st Level

Fireball barrage: And right off the bat we have an exception; this one isn't volumetric. It lets you cast one single-serving-sized fireball per round per level for a staggering 1d3 pts. of damage.  Presumably, the purpose of this spell is for the MU to light the candles in his laboratory without having to get up from his studies.
Sidewinder Factor 1: sidewinder fireballs can slither around walls and over obstacles to get to their target... where they will deliver 1d6-4 whopping pts of dmg/level of MU. Also, sub-freezing temperatures reduce the range of the spell by 10' per ℉ (5.5m per ℃) below freezing.  So at 22 ℉ (-5.6 ℃) it's effective range is 0 and you've cast it on yourself.  On chilly days you will want to consult a thermometer before casting this bad boy.

2nd Level

Skipping Betty: a single 10' r. fireball skips across the ground until it finds a target and detonates.
Sidewinder Factor 2: as Factor 1 but slightly more damage.

3rd Level 

Fireball: Yep, here it is in all its volumetric beauty. Well, not all the beauty; this version inflicts only 1d4 damage per level damage.  Strange that Kenzer and co. decided to pull their punches on this one.
Scatter-Blast: causes 1d6 separate 10'r. fireballs to go off in a randomly determined direction and distance.  Don't try this one underground... or anywhere else. 
Sidewinder Factor 3: as Factor 2 but slightly more damage.  

4th Level

Landscraper: Before I read the description of this spell, I thought it would maybe create a conflagration that would spread along the terrain conforming to contours sort of like the Sidewinder but the explosion itself would slither.  I was wrong.  Instead, it's just like a normal fireball but the "area of effect is increased by a 5ft. wide by 10' high parallelepiped* that extends back to the caster from the center of the main fireball."  Which is to say, after the blast fills its 33,000 cf of space, it then reaches out a little appendage in one last effort to reach the MU.  No idea why that would make it a 4th level spell, or what it has to do with scraping land. I like my interpretation much better.
Sidewinder Factor 4: as Factor 3 but slightly more damage. 
Volley: Launch one 10' r. fireball per round for the duration of the spell, each does 3d6 dmg.

5th Level

Sidewinder Factor 5: This, the final Sidewinder in the series, inflicts 1d6 dmg/level of caster.
Torrential: Area of effect is doubled to 40' r. sphere.  Does 1d6 per level.

6th Level

Show-No-Mercy: like a normal fireball but dmg is 1d8/level.
Proximity Fused: Spell is cast on a point in space and detonates only when someone approaches within 10' of this point.

7th level

Delayed Blast: just like it sounds. 

8th Level

Death Brusher: "This spell is the same as the 3rd level spell Fireball, except [the casting time is 8 segments instead of 3].  In addition, those taking damage from the Fireball must pass a system shock roll or be instantly slain."  I friggin' love HackMaster.
Maximus: Same as regular fireballs except damage is d10/level of MU.

9th Level

Lava Yield: Damage is 1d12/level and it melts stone within the area of effect.
Nuclear Winter: The spell description reads:"This spell has been rescinded in HackMaster 4th Edition."  And for good reason: the 20-mile radius area of effect, as indicated in the statblock for the spell, would make it more than a little ungainly.

In conclusion, there is no standard, 1d6/level fireball, but there are plenty of variants.

*A parallelepiped, as it turns out, is a rectangular cube, if that makes sense.  A very useful word, but so tragically cumbersome that it should not come as a surprise that the HackMaster rulebook is the only known usage of the term in a sentence.

Average Joe in New Basic D&D, or W. of the C. and I have something in common after all

As you already know, the latest Basic D&D rules abide by the old AD&D standard for rolling abilities: roll 4d6 and take the best 3.  But it also has a rule that, if you can't be bothered to roll your own dice you can just take a default set of "standard" ability scores and assign them to your character.  The standard scores are:

15
14
13
12
10
8

What's really astounding to me is that several years ago--a few years before I started this here bloggery-do--I was trying to devise anti-munchkinry character generation rules for AD&D, when I came up with the exact same idea, to the extent that the numbers are even strikingly similar.  Here's the standard set of ability scores I came up with back in '07:

16
14
13
12
10
8

The only difference is that they lowered the ceiling from 16 to a 15, which is in keeping with their whole "15 is max" ethos.  I'm pretty certain that we used the same approach to determine our standard abilities, whaddaya' think?

I came up with my standard by rolling thousands of sets of characters, ranking each character's abilities from highest to lowest and then averaging the ranked numbers in order to find an "average" character.*  In fact, I called the rule the "Average Joe Rule" and some perk was offered for taking the default ability scores instead of rolling your own, though I don't remember what the benefit was.  Of course, my players were so repulsed by such a notion that they never acknowledged its existence. Oh well.  But if nothing else--and assuming that all this isn't just a colossal coincidence--the Wizard-boys seem to validate my statistics, which is nice.

*Seriously, there were over 100,000 "dice rolls" involved, though Excel did all the heavy lifting for me.

Undead PCs

A few years ago I got into a debate with someone somewhere on the interweb--I think it was Rients--about what happens if you roll a 1 for your Hit Points and your Constitution is in the penalty zone: can a character be dead at inception?  Obviously that's not very satisfying, and yet hand-waving a minimum of 1 HP or re-rolling until you achieve a more arithmetically-pleasing result both seem like cop-outs.

Your new character sketch

Then, suddenly, just moments ago, it came to me in a flash: when your Con penalty puts your brand new, freshly rolled PC's hit point total at 0 or less then he/she is undead: you get to begin your adventuring career as a zombie!  The perks:

• You get to re-roll your hit points using 2d8 and ignoring your constitution score.
• No more worrying about things like drinking water, oxygen, and sleep or charm spells.
• Stick with this long enough and you get to be a freakin' Lich.

And some cons:

• Your appetite for brains might be a bit off-putting to your adventuring colleagues. 
• The cleric in your party can use Speak with Dead to force you to reveal embarrassing events from your past.
• Until you reach 9th level -- Vampire -- you might as well forget about getting laid; it absolutely will not happen.

New Basic D&D

Over the long weekend I celebrated American Independence by watching Copa Mundial on Univision--screw ESPN and its staid British commentary--and reading what other bloggers have to say about the newly released Basic D&D fantasy adventure game.  In order to keep my sheep credentials up to date, I thought I should follow the herd and compile my thoughts on the matter but, as a devotee of Advanced D&D, I can't really take anything called "Basic" seriously.  So, in lieu of my own analysis--which might require me actually reading the rules--I offer this cartoon by  Daniel Clowes:  

by Daniel Clowes, patron saint of outsiders

Greyhawk: The Iron League

Reggie Dunlop: The Iron League, huh? Lotta' fights? 
Jack Hanson: Nah.

We all know that the Iron League was formed when a handful of small provinces broke off from the southwest corner of the Rauxes-based Overkingdom.  How this was achieved is not obvious until one remembers that the Hanson brothers of "Slapshot" fame were Iron League natives.  Though Jack, Jeff, and Steve had little else to say on their land of origin, one can assume--given their reputation for goonery--that Jack's statement that fighting was not prevalent there must be understood that these sorts of things are, indeed, relative.

Against these dudes, the overking never had a chance.

The brothers, despite their youth and myopia, were big, tough warriors who foiled up their fists before each foray, never backed off from a brawl, and did not hesitate to deliver a low blow to gain the upper hand in a melee.  Sounds like the perfect combination of traits you want in a peoples if your intent is to break away from the largest, most powerful, and most criminally insane regime of the era. 

Oeridi-centric Bias in the Gazetteer

You don't have to read too much of the Greyhawk Gazetteer--or the later Guide edition for that matter--to realize that the thing was written by Oeridians.  And not just any Oeridians; more specifically, the author was most probably a member of the Aerdian clan that pushed eastward into the vast plains of the eastern Flannaes--though he or she is not too happy with the current state of affairs in the once Great Kingdom, he or she clearly takes pride in the past achievements of the Aerdi.  Below are a few of the more obvious indicators as to where the author's loyalties lie.

• Dates are given in CY (Common Year).  This is only done within the current confines of the Great Kingdom.  Most former G.K. states reverted to Oeridian Reckoning--if they ever adopted CY in the first place, beyond "official" ceremony--once they achieved independence from the Overkingdom and non-GK states never adopted the CY reckoning to begin with.  In fact, oddly enough, the Oeridian Reckoning is dominant throughout the eastern Flannaes outside the GK.
• Chronology begins at year 160 O.R.  Ignoring several millennia of history compiled by the Suloise, Olven, Bakluni, and Flan peoples, the chronicler chose a date very near to the Oeridian people's dubious beginnings as the point of origin of the Chronology and Brief History.
• Refers to the Realm of the Aerdi as The "Great" Kingdom.  Outside the current borders of said kingdom, it is rare in the extreme to find someone willing to use that conflated descriptor.  Scholars might refer to it--at best--as the Great Aerdian Kingdom or similar.  In Keoland, the term "Large Kingdom" is used mockingly, stripping the name of its grandeur and also including connotations of excess, as in "portly" or "bloated." The wags of Greyhawk take it a step further, referring to the Aerdian realm as "The Overkingdom" which is a knock on the hubris of the monarch's chosen appellation while also implying that the kingdom has surpassed its date of expiry.
• Assumes that the Suloise migrations into the Flannaes happened over land.  Only the aquaphobic Oeridians would overlook the significance of the sailing culture of the Suloise and assume that they traveled from their southern empire throughout the Flannaes on foot.  In fact, the Suloise had a vast maritime empire for millenia before the Oeridians crawled out of their termite hills in the Steppes or wherever they're from.  Though certainly some large scale movement of peoples occurred through the passes of the the Crystalmist, most major transit of Suel peoples throughout Oerth was by ship.  Certainly the only survivors of the RCF were those lucky enough to escape by sea as only a very small number managed to reach the safety of the mountain passes on foot before being swept up in the conflagration. 
• Implies that the Common Tongue is a product of the Great Kingdom.  While it is true that the Common Tongue is the official language of the G.K., and it is widespread throughout most of the Flannaes, it is not an Aerdian invention, as the Gaz author(s) would have you believe.  Rather, as the Oeridians moved eastward, their spoken tongue was heavily influenced by the Flannish and Suel languages of the folks they met along the way.  What emerged was a Lingua Franca that is an amalgam of the various tongues and cannot be claimed by any single people or nation. The GK claiming ownership of the common tongue is sort of like St. Louis claiming that it is the source of the Mississippi River. 
• Aerdians portrayed as conquering hoard. In fact, they merely occupied the vast, empty plains of the central Flannaes which had been passed over by the Suel and Flannish peoples.  The Flan, being agoraphobes, prefer forests, hills, and mountain valleys to the prairies, and the Suel were, early on at least, leery of settling too far from the sea.  
• Suel portrayed as malevolent slavers. Well, they're not actually wrong; this was true of the old Suloise Empire.  But most of the Suel settlers who came to the Flannaes were refugees fleeing the oppressive regime; a not insubstantial number of them being themselves escaped slaves, and thus, did not carry on the tradition of enslaving others. Often these people were Suel in speech only, having been members of oppressed ethnic groups during their time in the Suloise Empire.

Greyhawk: Guide vs. Gazetteer Discrepancies

From the chronology in A Guide to the World of Greyhawk (1983 Boxed set).  Years are Oerid (O.R.):

187 Oerid migrations east of peak point.
223 Invoked Devastation of Rain of Colorless Fire strike

Compared to the original Gazetteer (1980 Folio edition):

187 Oerid migrations east at peak point.
223 Invoked devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire strike.

These kinds of printing errors are great fun for historians trying to discern past events from copied texts, but anyone who reads "A Brief History of Eastern Oerik," which accompanies the timeline in both editions, will quickly learn that the Invoked D. and the Rain of C. were separate cataclysms, not a single, verbose event.

However, the item regarding Oerid migrations is a bit more of a conundrum.  While the terminology in the old Gaz is a bit ambiguous--it could mean that the volume of eastward migration of the Oerid was at its peak or it could also mean that peak point was a place that the migrants had reached--replacing "at" with "of", as some well-meaning but unknowing typesetter did for the Guide, makes the statement unambiguous: a literal translation of the Guide, as printed, insists that "peak point" be a place which Oeridian refugees were stumbling past sometime in the year 187 O.R.

That said, have any Greyhawkers who grew up on the Guide ever pondered where on the map this fabled Peak Point might be located? 

Where's Peak Point on this thing?