Halloween Eclipse Part II – Lord Goth

Anek Borez, A.K.A “Lord Goth” Eighth Level (ex-)Human Knight of Hades (ECL 12)    Over the years, Lord Borez had defeated many demons, undead, and other horrors. He had aided in the defense of the realm in disputes with the neighboring realms. He had risen to be one of the most respected knight-protectors of the kingdom, [...]

The Knights of Hades

   The Knights of Hades are the cursed spirits of noble knights, paladins, and other mighty warriors who. once dedicated to the forces of light. turned from that allegiance and swore themselves to darkness and destruction for reasons of affronted pride, unrequited lust, or blind wrath – and who then perished without renouncing that goal, [...]

Eclipse d20 – Torak Rosul, ECL 19 Lord of Darkness

   This year for Halloween, we have the vampire-lord of a cursed land…    Decay cannot be forever denied – but it can be diverted.    When one refuses to accept the decay of the mortal body, that decay can, instead, be transferred to the immortal soul.    Over time, all that is good and [...]

Torak Rosul – Followers

   For today, it’s a fragment; this years Halloween special is Torak Rosul, a vampire-lord (albeit not a template-based vampire) of surpassing power.    Unfortunately, that full writeup is taking awhile – so here we have a small segment: the notes on Torak’s minions:    What he actually has is Leadership with Beast Lord and [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 135 – The Clash of Blades

   Back in the New Imperium, in blissful ignorance of most of what had been going on elsewhere, Kevin, Marty, Ryan, and company were preparing to board the Hellstorm and engage in a desperate struggle against the powers of darkness…    Well, actually, Ryan was diverting himself with worries about his own allies (for which [...]

Eclipse d20 – Nullfields, Antimagic, Dismissal, and Arcane Overloads

   Here we have some compiled answers for Alzrius, since – once again – things were getting rather lengthy for the comment threads.    The Nullfield spell in The Practical Enchanter notes that, when used for creating a golem’s magic immunity, spellcasters can design spells that beat said magic immunity for the cost of the spell being [...]

Eclipse and the Hero System

   One recent request was for a comparison of Eclipse Character Points to Hero System Points. Now, the requestor is using the Fifth Edition Hero System, while I mostly use the Fourth Edition (I have mountains of books for it and it works just fine) – but the changes don’t seem very large anyway, so [...]

Justifiers-TORG Part II – Robin Hood, Fox-Beta

   Now that we have the Justifiers Cosm described in TORG terms, here we have a character for it – one “Robin Hood”, a fox-beta christened by a player who couldn’t resist the joke. .    Unlike many other TORG characters, Robin mostly contented himself with adding a few ranks to his most frequently-used skills, [...]

Family Business

   Regrettably, due to a family emergency, I won’t have time to post anything today. Hopefully everything will work out and there will be time for something tomorrow. Any requests?

TORG Justifiers

   Since TORG has been brought up, one of the more interesting features of that game – and one that played an important role in the novels – was that characters didn’t have to come from one of the major Cosms. They could, instead, come from any universe that the player and game master were [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 35

   I could already tell that our arrival around Coruscant was going to cause chaos at the very least. The local Ben was widely known to have destroyed galactic civilization, we had a super weapon in our possession, and we were about to request that the Jedi join us. This could hardly look any worse [...]

The Illusion of Game Balance – Part II

   A post a few days back on the Illusion of Game Balance led to a rebuttal, which can be found over HERE. The points made over there so far could be (very briefly) summarized as:    1) The more attention a particular Role gets in a rules set, the more options and abilities it [...]

Kadian Package Deals

   Those Thralls who have had time for advanced training (or, in a few cases, have arrived with the equivalent) can have any of several different package deals. Those who haven’t had such training already are being rotated back through Kadia to get it as quickly as possible.    For that matter, it’s perfectly possible [...]

Kevin’s Divine Endowment Bonuses

   Lord Kevin, thanks to a complex series of feedback loops, is now bestowing some sixty-eight points – close to three levels worth – of benefits upon his faithful followers. In general, that’s his agents and priests and wanna-be agents and priests.    He hasn’t really thought about the fact that the eligible candidates include [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 134c – The Foreshadowing

   In and about the Linear Realms Dr Brenner was experimenting… He’d accepted that Kevin and Marty were making moves on an infinitely bigger playing field than he had dreamed existed – and had decided that making a place for himself in their organization would be the best way to go. With the prospect of [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 134b – Ambition and Hubris

   On a considerably larger scale, the researchers had located several possible plasma- and energy-source realms for the Midnight Gardener project – although it might be necessary to design a specialized realm for the final source. Someplace where machinery the stations could be enchanted to be self-repairing or some other method of defying entropy indefinitely [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 134a – The Soulless and the Ensouled

   Back in Kadia, there was a bit of a surprise brewing for Marty… Over the past half a year, the Thralls had rescued (or hired) most of the ensouled population of Battling Business World – and some of the local phantasms with enough links to the ensouled had come along for the ride.    [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 34

   After Handell completed a short jump away from the galactic Core, we found ourselves outside the high energy radiation zone… Strange, such a short jump shouldn’t have brought us outside the radiation zone if the entire galactic Core was saturated with it. A couple of more jumps and we began to pick up subspace [...]

Advanced Armor Training

   Armor is very useful against most primitive and medieval weapons. Sure, a heavy crossbow bolt, or a longbow, or military pick, or quite a few other weapons could sometimes punch through it, and you could still be beaten to death right through flexible armor, but armor would still deflect some attacks and cushion a [...]

RPG Design – The Illusion of Game Balance

   A lot of work goes into the search for “game balance”. Answers to “frequently asked questions”, errata, rules patches, rules revisions, and entire new editions appear in an endless stream in attempts to “balance” printed games while online RPG’s constantly revise, recode, and expand.    The problem is that “balance” in a complex rules [...]