Happy St. Cuthbert's Day!

Well, not yet; it's on the 20th. But while you're chugging pints of Guinness, snarfing down bowls of Lucky Charms, and jumping around to the immortal words of House of Pain today on the most celebrated of saint's days, I'm gearing up for St. Cuthbert's big bash a few days hence. I did a quick search and found this interesting article about Cuddy's significance in Durham, England, where Cuthbert posthumously chose to rest after many years of wandering the countryside dodging Vikings and searching for cows. 

The article appears in The Palatinate which is the student newspaper of Durham University. The name Palatinate, it stands to reason, is a reference to the Palatinate that was originally granted to St. Cuthbert by King Ecgfrith in 684. It is said that Cuthbert still patrols the campus, knocking sense into the skulls of Oxbridge rejects with his mighty cudgel.  

 

Havin' a Psionic Blast Part XII: Devouring Your Intellect

It's balls.

Today I'd like to take some time to talk about the psionic adversaries of the Monster Manual. There was a whole ecosystem of monsters in AD&D intended to make being a psionic character dangerous, much like rot grubs and ear seekers existed solely to kill off corpse-looting and door-listening characters. 

First off, see the list of attack and defense modes below showing the letters associated with each mode? (posted somewhere on this page, I hope) These letters are important because they are used as a shorthand for denoting the psionic powers possessed by the monsters in the Monster Manual. It should also be noted that the letters demarking modes in the MM do not, on at least a couple of occasions, match up with the powers listed or described in the monster write-up under the stat block. 

As a for instance, the infamous Mind Flayer only has 1 psionic attack listed: "B", which is Mind Thrust. This is significant because Mind Thrust does not affect non-psionic beings so they're really not going to be flaying many minds, right? But if you read the description underneath the monster stats, it states that M. Flayer's "most feared attack mode ... is the mind blast [sic] of psionic power." Clearly that is supposed to be A. Psionic Blast.

Other Monster Manual Oddities:

Stolen from GM Binder

Brain Moles can cause "Permanent insanity in non-psionically endowed creatures employing psionic energy through spells or magic items." SP even though their one attack mode is B, Mind Thrust, they can still get you if you're using a helm of telepathy or using a spell to do psionic-adjacent things. More on this in a later post.

Cerbral Parasite feeds off of a character's psionic strength without the character knowing what's up. And they reproduce as they feed so, after a while, your psionic strength is getting sapped at an extraordinary rate. They cannot be attacked psionically, so you gotta' cure disease to get rid of 'em.

Demogorgon splits its psionic strength between its two heads which is cool because that's 2 psionic attacks and defenses going on at once. But each head has a strength of only 150, which gives an attack strength of only 75, which is not that great. 

Type III Demons have only one attack and one defense mode: E. Psychic Crush and F. Mind Blank. As G. Thought Shield is the only defense you can use whilst attacking with Psychic Crush, Type III demons cannot both attack and defend at the same time. A huge weakness, to be sure. Or, possibly, this was another case where the letter does not match the intended mode but, since the defense mode is not mentioned in the description, we'll never know.

Some larger Grey Oozes can use Psychic Crush, though their psionic strength can be as low as 21 which... still gives you a 50% chance of taking out one of Demogorgons heads in a single blow.

Intellect Devourer not only does this monster have the creepiest illustration in the original Monster Manual (see illustration above) but, like the Mind Flayer, it also has a discrepancy between attack modes listed by letter: "CE", and those described in the text: Ego Whip and Id Insinuation, which would read "CD". 

Thought Eaters don't actually have psionic ability but they do consume the psionic ability of others. Sadly, the MM doesn't tell us how they do it or at what rate, just that it can be done. But this is the first time anyone ever noticed because no one ever included a Thought Eater in an encounter.

Yellow Molds, are similar to grey oozes in that when they form large colonies they can become psionically active. If such a colony senses psionic beings within 120' they can blast them with "the most powerful form of id insinuation." The most powerful Id Insinuation turns any psionic-folk in a 20'x20' area with a Psionic Strength below 260 into a Robot controlled by the victor. That means that a yellow mold could take over each head of Demogorgon at once! It makes one wonder, though, what would it mean to be a robot in service to a mold colony?  [Thanks for the assist, Grodog]

 

 

Havin' a Psionic Blast (Rules Pt. XI): Attack and Defense Modes

For those keeping score, this is, finally, my actual 300th post.

 

Yesterday, with the help of Ponce the Paladin, we demonstrated how one determines whether you have psionix and what your Psionic Strength is. Did I mention that half of your attack strength is dedicated to Attack and half to Defense? No? Well now I have. On with it.

Today we're going to talk about the meat of Psionics: Attack and Defense modes. There are five of each and they are descriptively named and lovingly--if not particularly usefully--described in the text of the PHB. But you have to crack open the DMG to the two matrices on pages 76-77 to see what actual effects the attacks and defenses are going to have. 

Attacks against another psionic being who has an operable defense mode in place are only going to impact the defender's Defence Strength--except Psychic Crush which has a small chance of killing even a defended being. But once the poor slob is out of Def Str, that's when the real fun begins. Now you switch to the second matrix and that Mind Thrust that has been slowly depleting your defense for all these rounds suddenly is crippling your psionic abilities for weeks at a time, causing you to slip into a dazed and/or confused state that disallows any psionic usage, or blasting through your Attack strength--or hit points!--like a chainsaw through your neighbor's white picket fence.

Attack!

Listed below are the attack modes, with the attack strength cost in parentheses. Each time you Blast something Psionically, that depletes your Attack Strength by 20 points while Thrusting someone Mindfully costs a mere 4, and so forth.

A. Psionic Blast (20): Can kill opponents who have a very low psionic capacity as well as simple-minded non-psionics; otherwise it can cause a dazed and/or confused state or insanity. Affects all creatures in a cone 60' long, 20' wide at base. Can only be used against non-psionics if your current Attack Str. is 100 or more.

B. Mind Thrust (4): This is the battering ram you use to beat down your opponent's defenses either by doling out big wads of psionic damage or rendering attack or defense modes unusable. Like Ego Whip and Psychic Crush, Mind Thrust affects only one individual.

C. Ego Whip (7): Generally a less effective Mind Thrust that costs more to use, though a powerful ego whip vs. a defenseless opponent can cause permanent loss of psionic ability. Also has decent range.

D. Id Insinuation (10): This power seeks to take over the opposition, turning them into "robots" controlled by the attacker. It is also effective at depleting defense strength. Unlike most other psionic attacks, this one affects all psionic individuals in a 20'x20' area rather than just a single target. It also has the longest range of any attack, up to 18" at long range.

E. Psychic Crush (14): This one kills your opponent dead--or does nothing at all. The chance of a straight-up kill is not very high if the opponent is using any defense mode so it works best if you're either attacking an unsuspecting psionic or one who has no ability to defend itself. 

Let's call up Ponce the Paladin and see how he's doing. He's rolling d100 against a table to determine how many attacks he gets; Ponce rolls a 62, that gives him 3 attack modes.  With a maximum attack strength of 41, he's going to need to attack on a budget so he takes Mind Thrust, the cheapest attack  mode.  At his paygrade, Ego Whip is never going to be cost effective, so he passes on that. Likewise, Psychic Crush won't provide much chance of an instant kill--except against other psionic weaklings like himself--and will quickly deplete his own strength, so he takes Id Insinuation for its range and area of effect. Psionic Blast is also pricey--a single blast will use half of his Attack strength--but at least it might daze or confuse a modestly endowed opponent, allowing him to make a run for it, so he pockets that as well. 

De-Fence

And your Defenses; like Attacks, the cost per usage is given in (parentheses):

F. Mind Blank (1): Cheapest and least effective defense mode--except it is the best all around defense against Id Insinuation attacks for an individual.

G. Thought Shield (2): Another cheap defense mode, generally better than Mind Blank, but it's real advantage is that it's the only defense you can use while simultaneously attacking with Psychic Crush.

H. Mental Barrier (3): A step pricier and more effective than Thought Shield--except against Id Insin, which it is slightly worse at. It's most interesting characteristic is in the intriguing description: 

"A carefully built thought repetition wall which exposes only that small area."    What small area is "that" area that is left exposed?? I need to know!

I. Intellect Fortress (8): The big jump in price reflects not only that this is a much more effective defense mode but, also, it protects everyone in a 10' radius, which includes providing your non-psionic friends a +2 saving throw bonus v. Psionic Blast.

J. Tower of Iron Will (10): The Cadillac of defense modes in almost every way. Even though its protection radius is only 3', it offers a hefty +6 save bonus to your closest chums vs. Psionic Blast.  

Now back to Ponce; he rolls on the table for defenses and gets a 29: three defense modes are available to him. Interestingly, you get 2 defense modes at the minimum. Cheap is always good and you can't get cheaper than Mind Blank, so that's done. [EDIT: As Faoladh points out in the comments below, everyone with psionics gets Mind Blank as one of their defenses whether they want it or not]. Ponce, being a chivalrous sort, also needs to be able to protect a fair maiden--should he ever meet one--from Psionic Blasts, so he needs one of the area of effect defenses; he takes Tower of Iron Will, ostensibly for its better protection but also because it gives him reason to keep the maidens within 3' of his person. Creep. 

What to do with number 3... he doesn't have Psychic Crush as an attack so there's really no reason to take Thought Shield.  Mental Barrier is still pretty cheap and a lot better than Mind Blank at defending against Mind Thrusts and Ego Whips so that decides that. 

Havin' a Psionic Blast: How to read the AD&D rules Part X: Psionics

Let's get this out of the way at the outset: on their own, I think psionics are pretty freaking' cool. Although almost universally ignored back in the day, psionics didn't fall by the wayside because they were too byzantine or clumsy or whatever, they withered on the vine because they seemed like you were playing a different game entirely. It was a fun game, but it just didn't fit with the rest of the D&D vibe.

Back when I was a kid, my gang's first batch of AD&D characters--all multi-classed elf munchkins with 19 Dexes and 18/72 Strengths--also miraculously succeeded at acquiring psionics even though elves are not on the short list of PC races that could be psionic (Humans, Dwarves, Halflings). We went around Psionic Blasting everything in town that we hadn't already Psychic Crushed. It was fun for a while but a few months later we graduated from munchkin gaming and psionics disappeared from our D&D experience ever after.

Enough of my self indulgence. Here's how to read the Psionics rules starting on pg 110 of the PHB:

The rules for acquiring psionix are actually pretty straight forward. You need an Int, Wis, or Cha (the psionic trinity) of 16 to have even a 1% chance of getting psionics. The author then lays out in analog form the possible additions to your roll, it woulda' been helpful to make a table like this:

Even if all three are 16, that's still only a 1% chance.

but he didn't. No big deal, at best, with 18s at I, W, and CH, you get a 9% chance of being psionically gifted. So even if you banish your best rolls to the classic dump stats, you still only had a slight chance of being rewarded. 

e.g. Ponce the Paladin has a 17 Cha (minimum for paladins at the time), 15 Wis and 12 Int. Because one of those scores is 16 or higher, he gets to roll for psionics. He needs a 00 roll on d100, and rolls a 99. Close but no cig--"Wait, I get a 1/2% bonus because of my 17 Cha." he pleads. The Book says to ignore fractions, but we're all gamers here, we can handle fractions: roll a 10 sider, if you get 6 or higher you're in. Ponce rolls and gets another 9! Welcome to the Psionix Club, Ponce.

So you're one of the lucky few who managed the roll, or, more likely, your Dungeonmaster just said "Fine, you can have psionics." Now what? You have to determine your psionic strength; this is done by rolling d100 and adding 1 for each point of I, W, and/or CH exceeding 12. If two of those scores exceed 12, double the total bonus, if all three are 13 or higher, quadruple the crap out of the number. 

Ponce rolls his 100-sider for psionic strength and gets a 25. To that number he adds (17-12=)5 points for his Ch, plus (15-12=)3 for Wis for a total of 8, doubled because 2 ability scores are >12 for a bonus of (2x8=) 16. 16+25 = 41.

Had Ponce's Int been 1 pt higher he'd have had a 9 base bonus, further, he would have been able to quadruple it for a total bonus of 36 to the d100 roll. Sadly, Ponce was not smart enough to be that smart so he's stuck with 41. This number is doubled to get total Psionic Strength, so Ponce has 82. It's called "psionic ability" in the PHB, but that strikes me as rather ambiguous, so I will be using Psionic Strength or Capacity henceforth.  

What do you do with your psionic strength? You attack people with it, you defend yourself [and maybe your cronies] with it, or you use spell-like functions called "disciplines" that allow you to do a lot of really cool things for just a few points of psionic strength per round. Given that you're probably not encountering other psionic beings every day, more often than not you're just using those disciplines to do cool things like telepathy, teleportation, telempathic projection, telekinesis, or maybe one of the disciplines that don't start with "tele-". 

But really what made Psionics cool was the combat, and I'm running out of room here so we'll get to that tomorrow in what will also be the 300th post here at DiceChuckles Entertainment.

How to read the AD&D Rules Part IX

I got it way wrong. In case you haven't been reading, I spent a week or more passing along misinformation about AD&D Surprise rules. After a jolting bit of input from some folks the other day, I realized my mistake and decided to give Surprise the Alignment Language treatment. But on doing so, I wanted to make sure I covered all the required terrain, which lead me to read this sentence at the bottom of the left column on pg 62 under Factors Contributing To Surprise: 

"The overall result would not materially add to the game--in fact, the undue complication would detract from the smooth flow of play." 

While EGG wrote this in reference to listing modifications for a variety of in-game situations that might lead to surprise it should really be extrapolated to encompass the entire sadistically convoluted segment-based AD&D Surprise Party. Never has a more apt sentence been written in description of not just the surprise rules, but also unarmed combat, psionics, weapon vs. AC modifiers, and a host of other rules chaff proliferated by the same pen that crafted this poignant quote.

Surprise Party Redux: Surprise rules part 3 (HRAD&DR Part VIII)

I'll admit that the 1 minute melee round renders a bit of sense from the segment-based Surprise Party. In all the other D&Ds that just give you a free round of surprise, the round is only 10 seconds or less, so you're effectively just giving them a free segment. If you ignore, for the moment, the "why?" of one minute melee rounds, having the surprised party stand inert for a full 60 seconds seems a bit ridiculous, and it also seems ridiculous that, with a full minute to molest the surprised party, the Surprisors would only get to attack once, so EGG broke it down to segments. 

Why not just give the surprisers one free segment to act? Well, with AD&D's ridiculously slow movement rates, on most occasions they'd be too far away to take advantage of it (again: please ignore the larger question), so Gary devised the multiple segment Surprise Party, allowing the Suprisors to charge into combat and whack away at the inert dupes. But then he realized that 4 or 5 segments of surprise could easily TPK even the most seasoned of gaming parties, as Quisling and Schlomo discovered last week, so he gives a Dexterity bonus in the form of the Reaction Adjustment to allow high Dexed combatants to get out of surprise early. Surprise was going to be somewhat less deadly for PCs who were crafty enough to fudge their Dex rolls, which, given the AC, missile attack, and [universally house-ruled] initiative bonuses affiliated with a high Dex, was most of us back in the day.

On a related note it strikes me as a bit odd that the Surprise Dice Difference table (above) in the DMG only goes up to 3 segments even though it should go up to 5 (6-1). There's nothing in the text that caps the Surprise Party at 3 segments, and the table doesn't indicate that you should do the math to figure out 5-1, 6-2, and 6-1 on your own, though, obviously, you can. It would have taken very little effort to add 2 more rows to complete the formula and yet they chose not to. Was Gary trying to subtly suggest that beyond 3 segments thar be dragons?

...or maybe the added rows would have forced the printers to shrink the already tight margins down from 1/8" to 7/64", and they just weren't willing to go that far.

Rift in time: Surprise! in action (How to Read... Part VII)

While a lot of folks have commented that when they played AD&D back in the day they swapped out a lot of the more confusing gibberish for simpler rules cribbed from the Basic books. Well, probably because we didn't play Basic D&D long enough to actually learn the rules, my gang went a different direction: we did not use surprise rules at all. Unless one party was lying in ambush or actively sneaking up on the other, or one party was clearly distracted or drunk or asleep--surprise was not a state of being that existed. The side that got the drop on the other based on the situation had a free round to assault the stooges. Rolling for Surprise! at the start of every encounter seemed like just another complication in an already complicated rule set.

But the point of today's post is not to lecture you on the olden ways, but to deliver up a demonstration of Surprise! in action. Continuing on the example from last time when Schlomo, Quisling, and the rest of Party B were surprised by Party A...

 Example of Surprise

Six-siders are rolled for surprise:

Party A: 5

Party B: 1

Party B: is surprised for 5-1= 4 segments.

Today we're going to run the above scenario through as it might happen at the gaming table. Party A is a group of six gnolls patrolling their sector of the dungeon, and Party B is a group of six low level adventurers arguing about how to split up the treasure they just secured after killing the ogre in room 14. They are:

Schlomo Slow-mo, Cleric, Dex 4: -2 reaction adj.

Quisling the Quickling, Thief/MU, Dex 17: +2 reaction adj.

Spungoir the Spelliferous, MU

Furdok of Burd, Fighter

Kuburt, Monk

Rajoo, Ranger

As already determined the entire party is surprised for 2 segments after which time Quisling, thanks to his +2 reaction adj. will move out of surprise, except this time Quisling goes against his nature and actually stays loyal to his countrymen. Two segments later everyone except Schlomo will awake from their stupor. Schlomo, whose pitiful dex afflicts him with a -2 rx adj., will have to wait until segment 7 before he's paroled.

The Gnolls have a move of 9" and are 20' away so they won't even be in stabbing range until surprise segment 2. Wait a second, with a move of 9 inches you can cover most of 18 feet in 2 segments? Fear not, we'll have a How to... session on Movement in AD&D soon.

Segment 1: Two gnolls lob spears at Party B (not Cardi B) before advancing. One hits Furdok while the other bounces harmlessly off the wall. Gnoll 6 fires a heavy crossbow for 7 dmg. killing Spungor the Spelliferous--now the Lifeless. The rest of the gnolls move 1/10th of their move, getting 9' closer to the party. Yes, 9' in 6 seconds is p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow but there are probably several paragraphs somewhere in the DMG where Gary explains that movement in AD&D does not represent actual spacial displacement over time, but is a conceptual representation of  yada yada yada. 

Segment 2: The gnolls now move into melee range and start swiping at Party B. The two who tossed the spears last time choose to charge the party allowing them to cover twice their movement and still get an attack. This makes the other gnolls wonder why they didn't do that in the previous round. [It's probably because they're following this blog series and we haven't covered charging yet.] Anyway, there's one gnoll for each party member because Gnoll 6 is hanging back reloading the heavy crossbow at 3x the normal speed. Let the slaughter begin!

Segment 3: Quisling--"Quiz" to his friends, at least to the ones he hasn't betrayed yet--is no longer surprised, so Gnoll 3, who had attacked him the previous segment can no longer get in those sweet "telling blows." They have to roll initiative at this point, even though everyone else is still involved in Surprise. 

                Quisling: 4, Gnoll: 2. 

Quiz gets to swing first, rolls a 5 and misses with his short sword. Gnoll 3's turn but she says "Screw that, if I attack you I'm done for the round. There's a guy standing next to you who'll be surprised for at least 2 more segments, I'm attacking him instead." She cuffs Schlomo up side the head with a morningstar.

Segment 4: The gnolls keep whaling on the still-surprised party members, some of whom are not looking so hot. Quisling has shot his wad bolt, um, you get the idea, for the round and should, by standard melee protocol, be feinting, parrying, and dodging blows from Gnoll 3 for the next 54 seconds. But Gnoll 3 chose instead to attack a still-suprised party member and therefore remain involved in the Surprise Party. Quisling has fallen into a rift in the melee continuum: he has already used his one attack for the round, but his co-combatant has decided not to return the favor. Does Quisling have to dance around pretending to dodge and parry blows that no one is delivering? That's preposterous. Does he get to deliver another blow on Gnoll 3? Gnoll 3 isn't surprised so segment-based telling blows do not apply, but they do apply to his surprised comrades--don't do it Quisling! He resists temptation and wanders away from combat. [No kiddies, opportunity attacks do not exist in AD&D; for all its flaws it at least has that going for it.]

Segment 5: Everyone but Schlomo is now un-surprised. If not for Slo-mo Schlomo, we'd start a new round here, but since he's still got 2 more segments of inaction, the Surprise Party continues and we're gonna' use the same initiative roll from segment 3. That's ok by Party B since Quisling won that roll; they start retaliating for the punishment they've taken. Most of the gnolls now engage in normal melee, Gnoll 5 drops Furdok of Burd with a blow from his zwei-handed sword, but Gnolls 3 & 4 are still attacking poor Schlomo rather than join the regular initiative. Quisling, still occupying the rift in the space time continuum, takes this opportunity to cast a 1 segment spell, magic missile, at Gnoll 3.

Segment 6: There are still 2 gnolls who insist on beating on poor Schlomo, and Gnoll 5, having used his regular melee attack to kill Furdok during the last segment, decides he wants to go back to the Surprise party and attack Schlomo too. The players all cry foul but the DM persists and Gnoll 5 swings at the beleaguered cleric anyway, hitting for 3 pts of dmg. Schlomo--shockingly--withstands the blow and, even worse for the DM, the players will absolutely use this decision against him in the future.

Segment 7/New Round: Yahweh smiles on Schlomo today, for he has miraculously survived 10 attack rolls from the gnolls and is finally unsurprised. A new round begins and initiative is rolled, much to the chagrin of Gnoll 6--remember her?-- who has finally finished reloading that stupid freakin' crossbow. She will certainly be razzed for this in the mess hall tonight. The PCs, who are busy filing a meta-gaming complaint against Gnoll 5, lose the initiative. Rajoo and Kuburt both fall under gnollish battle axes leaving just Quisling and the sluggish and heavily battered Schlomo to face off against six gnolls. Quisling regrets not betraying his chums when he had the chance.