That night they met with Cecil, a clerk with the city guard, friend of Abel Basehore, and a forger used often by the Rough Boy Guilds in the X Marks the Spot. He informed them that Abel wasn’t killed with the others in the meeting of the nine Underlords and was sent to Teskom Prison under a false identity. They devised a plan to get him out of the heavily guarded prison. They stole a seal from a member of the city council after Pepper Anne seduced his head servant to let them into the home (and then was forced to kill him when he stumbled upon Mirek searching the council members office). In the meantime Tolman, who was masquerading as Pepper Anne’s driver drove the council member’s niece to a ball leaving them without a getaway vehicle. They gave the seal to Cecil who forged release papers for Abel. Tolman and Pepper Ann killed three guards and they with Mirek impersonated them to go deliver the papers to get Abel released. When they got Abel out they found he was extremely ill and beyond their help. At Able’s insistence they took him to a shack in the worst and slummiest part of the city where a man healed him stating “I can’t believe they would go this far” to no one in particular and when questioned said no more other than to leave Able here for now.

A few days later the three of them received a message via Cecil to meet Able at his house. They went to meet him and Able divulged his plan to try and cut off some of the violence which was to come with people clambering for power of the leaderless criminals. His plan was to quickly recruit others of various skill sets in different parts of the city and set them up as guild leaders who answered to Mirek, Tolman, Pepper Anne and Cecil, who in turned answered to Able secretly (for now). The recruited several people and Able convinced them to agree with his plan and gave them each a territory to start recruiting and establish their guilds.

Able also made contact with one of the bandits who haunt the roads from the city to its outlying villages by the name of Horros Silverkin. He told Able of a man named Walter who had taken control of all of the bandits several months ago. His methods were cruel and violent and gave no profit to the guilds in the cities. Able had Mirek, Tolman and Pepper Anne go with Horros to find Walter and remove him from leadership and place Horrus, who pledged his loyalty to Able, in charge of the now united bandits.

They left the city early the next morning. About midday they ran into an ambush set up by a group of bandits. They easily subdued most of the bandits but one got away and they were forced to kill one. They interrogated the remaining bandits and learned that Walter continuously moved the main bandit camp and that it recently moved and that the only one who knew its new location of the group was the psion who got away.

That night they met up with some of Horrus’s men, Grunk, the Half-Orc Druid who spends most of his time as a wolf and Auren the Wood Elf who is quick with his blades. They had been trailing Walters camp and informed them that it was about a day away. They traveled to the camp where Pepper Ann transformed into a Hawk and scouted it. When she returned they devised a plan of taking out two of the guard posts simultaneously then rushing to Walter’s tent as he slept and taking him out. They took out the two guard posts quickly, swiftly and quietly. Mirek stunned one of the guards using his mental powers while Horrus and Viktoria (Mirek’s most powerful mental slave) took out the two guards with their arrows. At the other guard post Grunk slithered as a snake towards the guards and waited in case something went wrong. Tolman and Auren snuck up on the two guards and slit their throats. Meanwhile Pepper Ann in the form of an owl sat on a tree keeping watch and ready to react in case something went wrong. They quietly made their way to Walter’s tent in the middle of the camp. Hey entered to find Walter not sleeping but pacing in thought. He tried to get away but Grunk had transformed into a giant wolf and Pepper Ann transformed into a Bear blocking two of the four entrances, and one blocked by everyone else. Walter managed to get out the fourth entrance and yell for help. The bandits began to wake and the other four guards from the other two guard posts began to come towards the fight. But it was too late. Grunk rushed two of the guards and pinned them to the ground, but not before one of them fired a crossbow bolt into Pepper Anne’s behind. The bandits were starting to emerge from their tents in various states of drew, but all with weapons in hand. But it was too late for Walter. He took an arrow to his chest. It should have been the end of Walter but the shot forced him to transform into his true form. That of Cruksis, a vicious Green Dragon. He sprayed corrosive acid from his mouth seriously injuring Mirek and then he flew away yelling “You have ruined the plans. Tornstin shall pay!”

Tolman, Mirek and Pepper Anne sat at a table in the corner of the famous inn known as the “X-Marks the Spot.” It was fuller than normal, but quieter than ever. News spread quickly of the raids on hideouts and safe houses belonging to all the guilds and the attack on the meeting of the nine guild lords. Like everyone else in the inn they were afraid, hoping this place, considered neutral territory by the nine guilds and the city guard, was a safe place and would also not be raided.

Tolman, Mirek and Pepper Anne had all only met once before merely two weeks before at the house of Abel Basehore, the top Lieutenant of the Rough Boys Guild. They knew not what each other was capable of but they knew each had skills useful to the Rough Boys, and were good enough to be recognized by Abel.

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Pepper Ann seems to be a mere seamstress. But she was taught how to love and commune with nature by her mother who was known as Ailbe the Guide. A Druid of the Central Circle. She met her husband, a simple and older tailor who got lost and injured in the woods to the east of Tornstin. Ailbe died when Pepper Ann was only 14 years old. The only thing she has from her mother is a sickle. Through her whole Pepper Ann has lived very poorly. She believes the near state of poverty that she and her family is always lived in is her father’s fault. She also resents him because she feels he is keeping her trapped in Tornstin when she wants to go and travel through nature. She has thought about killing him numerous times but then she is reminded that if nothing else, her mother loved him very much. He is now 70 and very ill. She is just bidding her time, waiting for him to die before she can leave. Till then she acts as an assassin for the Rough Boys. Killing targets using her Druidic abilities to maim them and hoarding money and possessions to satisfy her need for material things which she never had in her youth.

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Mirek Lydyss was the son of a high priced prostitute. When he was 5 his mother died of a disease associated with her line of work and he was tossed out onto the street by the madam of the brothel. He spent two years living by his wits and generosity of others until he caught the attention of a man named Dash. Dash had a small crew in the Roaring Boys and used young boys to sneak into places through cracks and small windows where no other thieve could get through. He taugh Mirek what he knew, but Mirek was a Klutz and not very good at stealth, picking locks or most of the other skills associated with the trade. But Mirek had one useful skill. He had a silver tounge. He could read a mark like nobody else. Whether it was serving as a distraction or a simply talking one out of their money was very successful. When Mirek was 12 Dash and he planned on robbing a merchant. But when they attempted to do so the merchant, Sidanis, performed magic that neither had ever seen before. He stopped them with just the power of his mind. He allowed Dash to leave but kept Mirek. Sidanis took Mirek in and taught him about the powers of the mind. Mirek continued to run with Dash as well as other in the Roaring Boys, but Sidanis warned Mirek that he was never to draw attention to himself or towards Sidanis. Sidanis and Mirek even had a secret language which only they could understand. To others it sounded merely like a snake hissing. When Mirek turned 15 he returned home and found the place emptied out except for a letter addressed to him.

“I’ve taught you enough for you to figure out the rest on your own. Someday I may ask you to repay the favor. I’ve gone home to deal with family matters. There may be some men looking for me, I don’t suggest staying here.”

Mirek left and went back to the life of a grafter working with the Roaring Boys.

Unlike his 2 associates Tolman and Pepper he does not like to kill. He will in self defense if he must, but he prefers not to kill. He will violate the minds of others, but always tries to avoid killing because killing is too messy.

The City of Tornstin

A Basic History of the City of Tornstin

Lord Tornstin the First was a minor noble of the Leantow Empire. After the death of the last emperor the empire fell into chaos with nobles fighting for power. Being a minor noble with few allies and little hope of surviving the war fled with his family, troops and people to a small fishing village to the far north of the Empire, which was already under his protection. None followed him.

The village just watched as the Empire disintegrated from a large empire to a few small kingdoms who were at war with each other and constantly under attack from Yuan-ti,Goblins and Orcs. While this was going on the small village started to blossom into a real town. It was safer than anywhere else in the former empire being so far away.

The small town had problems of its own. It was constantly under attack from Goblin tribes in the region. To make matters worse two Dwarven clans, Nefletha and Brynblai, went to war and the town of Tornstin was right in between the two warring clans. Tornstin the 4^th, managed to setup a summit and mediate a peace between the two clans. Both clans were grateful and as a gift to the people of Tornstin left troops to defend the small town and built Gelmval (Messenger of Peace) Keep. The two clans and Tornstin have been great allies ever since.

As the small town grew Tornstin the 6^th knew stronger leadership was needed to keep order and declared himself King Tornstin the First. The line of rulers were all known as great and even handed rulers with a desire for peace and prosperity for its people. They invaded no one and took in villages as protectorates.

As time went on Tornstin grew into a small city. Merchants began growing in power and demanded more and more power from the royalty. 500 years ago, not happy that King Tornstin the 10^th would not give them more power and raised taxes on them for city works and improvement of the lives to the common people led an insurrection against the king. King Tornstin was killed, but his family escaped. What happened to them is unknown, but many believe that even today their descendants live in the city.

The merchants created an assembly that required a certain monetary worth to belong. A few years later they added an election process where a number of people could run to join the assembly. The number of elected people must be 1 less than the number of wealthy members.

We came out of the portal into a giant room. On both sides was a wall of Force. On the left side of the left wall were golden colored orbs of energy and on the other were Blue ones. They had tentacles coming out the top of them and they seemed to have some sort of eyes (What are characters were presuming to be eyes). In front of us were three rows of tables, 4 rows per table. Going from one end of the room to the other under the tables were 6 cables, 3 white, 3 black. They ended at boxes at the end of each row of tables. Our group, learning to be very cautious stood there for a second and looked around. Nothing seemed to be an immediate threat. Charlie, our sorcerer (yes the character’s name is Charlie), walked and examined each table. It became quite obvious that this was some sort of alchemical lab. The tables had lab notes, beakers and vials and human body parts. Frey, My Whisper Gnome, couldn’t see past the table in front of her so she climbed up onto the one table. She noticed the bodies, body parts and So held up her arms (her bracers are her holy symbol) and attempted to turn any undead, just in case. The only thing to happen was a wave of positive energy flowed out of the golden orbs of energy towards her, and the white cables began to glow a little. She then noticed some sort of script some sort of script engraved into the tables. Upon further investigation she realized it was infernal, but she couldn’t read it. At about the same time Recyn (My Elven Archer) noticed past the tables were rows of tiles, some black, some white. Beyond that were big glass cylinders with bodies, and body parts suspended in some sort of green liquid. Stinky, the parties Half-Orc Barbarian began moving forward out of boredom. Then we heard a high pitch voice, which seemed to come from nowhere threatening us.

The green liquid started to drain out of the cylinder containers and the glass slid down. Several zombie like creatures stepped out and began walking forward. Freya, who despises undead, more so then any other person any of the party had ever met, charged forward. She tried turning the undead creatures, but only one ran away from her. One of the bit her and she became dazed. Stinky turned invisible and moved forward. Charlie cast Meteor Storm, but only one was taken out of commission, or so we thought, while the others, though obviously damaged were just fine. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing her arrows. Then, the undead creature which we thought was done got back up and began putting itself back together. Freya, took damage, but wasn’t sure how. Two of the creatures bit Freya again and she became much weaker (Taking 5 points of strength damage, when you only have a 10 strength sucks, let me tell you). And then Stinky came charging in swinging and dismembering one.  But she was then bit. Recyn shot one with an arrow and a loud boom was heard as it hit the undead creature knocking backwards off of a black tile and unto a white one, on its back. Charlie sent a bolt of lightning through another creature, taking it out of commission. Then the ones which were hit, which all except one, were on black tiles got back up again. Freya, who was still dazed was able to figure out that the black tiles radiated negative energy, and the white tiles radiated positive energy. Freya was bit again and collapsed onto the ground (6 points of strength damage this time) unable to move. The only saving grace she had was her arm collapsed on top of her chest. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing while yelling, push them to the white tiles. Stinky went into a rage and pushed one onto a white tile, while Charlie cast Prismatic Ray and sent two of them to other dimensions and frying a third one. The damaged undead creatures rose once again and began to attack, but Freya managed cast Greater Restoration on herself and crawl to a white square avoiding the one zombies attempt to squash her. Stinky then pushed another one to a white square while Charlie disintegrated one and Recyn shot one up full of holes (6 holes to be precise). Stinky was then bit again, while Freya made one of the blasphemous creatures from an undead creature, to just a dead creature. Recyn shot one up again with her arrows while Charlie side stepped to get a better angle for his next spell. The one Recyn shot suddenly fell and stopped moving and Stinky was able to smash the other. Stinky and Freya charged after the fleeing zombie like creature, which was no longer afraid of Freya. It moved to a corner of a room in the back and Stinky and Freya smashed at it repeatedly while Charlie and Recyn moved there way forward in the room.

So the encounter is half over. All that is left are the balls of Energy (Energons from Manual of the planes (Called something else which starts with a Z in previous editions)) and the (Gay) lich in the other room. So overall, my Undead hating Cleric (Hierohant, Contemplative) and Recyn haven’t done much, but hopefully once we see the lich Freya will get to do a little better.

If she can see it, she can shoot it. If she can't see it, she can still probably shoot it

Here is the full character sheet. Recyn – The Elven Archer

Character Personality
Saelion is extremely friendly and kind. He hates to hurt others and uses his abilities to protect everyone he can. Even when battle he tries to encourage his allies to show mercy and not kill.

Character Background
Saelion was born to a wealthy Elven family. In his early childhood he lived a life of luxury. When he started his apprenticeship to his wizardry master war broke out. Saelion’s master was asked to help with an offensive and he took Saelion with him. Saelion saw the destruction that magic could cause. His master was killed during the offensive and Saelion vowed to use his magic to protect others.

Advancement
The two best ways I see to advance Saelion is to increase his wizarding levels giving him access to higher level abjuration spells. The other way is give him cleric levels. The cleric levels will give him the ability to heal which would work great with his personality.

Master Abjurer Saelion

Master Abjurer Saelion Spellbook

Character Personality
The Dread Pirate Simmoines is extremely cruel and takes pleasure in torturing his victims. He is very intelligent and when in battle is tactically and strategically minded. He loves his reputation and uses it to its fullest potential to intimidate his prey and enemies. His crew on the other hand he treats fairly well.

Character Background
The Dread Pirate Simmoines was born to a semi-wealthy family though he doesn’t know much about it. When he was only 8 years old his family was journeying by sea. Their ship was attacked by pirates. All were killed except for the Simmoines who was taken captive by the Captain, the Dread Pirate Charlie. Simmoines was taken because Charlie wanted a cabin boy and another human onboard his ship. From Charlie he learned about seafaring and piracy amongst other things. He worked his way up through the crew to eventually become the second mate of the ship at the age of 16. His cruelty towards those ships preyed upon made Dread Pirate Charlie look tame and merciful. His cruelty made much of the Goblin crew fear and respect him. When he reached the age of 18 he led the crew against the Dread Pirate Charlie and the First Mate. As Captain of the pirate ship Lost Hope, he took piracy to the absolute evil it could be taken. When he attacks a ship he doesn’t just kill its crew and passengers. He tortures them; he rapes women and children before killing them. He quite often keeps one person alive, though mentally scarred for life to tell the tale. He has gone so far as to occasionally sneak into a port at night to secretly deliver the the lone survivors to ensure the tale is told. Because of this he and his ship are the most feared pirates on the sea.

His crew however he treats a little differently. He fears that one day they might mutiny against him. So he ensures that they receive an equal share of the spoils, though keeping the best for himself. However, any crew member who shows sign of weakness, or mutinous actions or thoughts is tortured or killed.

He shuns any type of organization between other pirate ships. He is not for hire and will only consider any type of negotiation if he feels the other party has something truly worth getting. After getting what he wants he kills the one(s) he negotiated with and leaves no survivors.

Advancement
This is a level 16 character so it is already pretty powerful. However, making the Dread Pirate Simmoines more deadly is easily done. Depending on what you need done there are several ways. The simplest method would be to improve his equipment. Gives his weapons additional pluses since they are only +1 items. Add keen to them to increase the critical range from 18 to 17 making it more likely to critically hit. Give him gloves of dexterity to increase his dexterity which would make it more likely to hit his targets and make him nimble thus harder to hit and improve his balance and rope skills.

Adding class levels is obviously a good way to go if you need his CR to be higher. Adding levels of Rogue would give you loads of skill points to make him extremely skillful as well as improve his sneak attack and give him Improved Uncanny Dodge. I would add to those Jump, Tumble, Use rope and Intimidate skills to make him most interesting. Adding levels of fighter would give him extra feats and greatly improve his combat abilities. Adding sorcerer would improve his will saves and add some low level magic to his repertoire. Adding Bard would give him many skill points and limited magical capabilities. Druid could be an interesting choice, especially with the aquatic animal wild shapes. However the druid’s necessity to not have metal would greatly limit him in the long run. Barbarian, cleric, ranger and wizard, though could be interesting really don’t offer anything. Monk and paladin are out of the running.

The most interesting way of improving upon him is to make him a vampire. Now I know what you’re thinking. “But Vampires have problems with traveling on the water and as Captain of a ship he may need to be out in the sun.” Well it is a simple problem to resolve. Give him a magic item or an artifact that allows him to cross water and be in the sun.

Dread Pirate Simmoines

Now as I said before, I don’t know how often you use prestige classes from the various sources out there, but I bet it isn’t often. So for the next few Character Counts articles I am going to focus on prestige classes from the various non core books. I will give the normal background and personality so even if you don’t play D&D 3.5 you can still use the character in your campaign.

To make the characters I will use PCGen to get the ability scores. It is set to Roll 4d6 drop the lowest. With the exception of that required to use the prestige class all skills, feats, abilities and items are from the core books and RSRD.

Character Counts – Delamaoh Mountaintracker – Level 10

Character Creation Notes
Was completely made in PCGen

Character Background
Delamaoh family lived and worked in the lowest and most dangerous levels of the Dwarven city. The clan
was attacked by Duergar (Gray Dwarves) when she was young. Both of her parents were killed in the attack. The clan lost the
lower levels in the attack and evacuated to the higher levels. Delamaoh was accidently left behind. She managed to evade
capture and fled even lower underground. She lived alone for many years deep underground constantly fighting with aberrations,
magical beasts and small Duergar patrols. Several years later in her wanderings she ended up back by the lower levels of the
Dwarven city. She wandered into a battle. Her clan, after years of battle was finally pushing the Duergar out of the lower levels of
their city. She jumped right into the battle. During the fight she ended up saving the leader of the clan. The Duergar was defeated
and pushed out of their city. Now Delamaoh lives in the lower levels of her ancestral home and patrols for threats to it almost
always alone except for her constant companion, the Dire Rat she calls Sharp Tooth.

So what happened to my game? When did it start to fall apart? Well it started to fall apart in October of 2008. One of my players hurt his knee badly at work. Because of it he couldn’t drive. The game was normally at my house because everyone except for him lived right by me. At the time was the DM. So we cancelled the game two weeks in a row. The third week I threw together a quick dungeon for myself and the other two players. We then found out the one guys knee problems became very serious and needed surgery. So we moved the game to his house which is a bit of a distant from us since it is a suburb of New York. We finished his adventure in the end of November and our youngest player, who unlike the rest of us who are in our late 20s was just a senior in high school, was going to be the DM for the next adventure.

He was going to run a modified version of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was also going to be the first appearance of our custom race, The Tainted Ones, which is based off of vampires. So we made our characters one week and the next week we started the adventure. (I’ll post a little bit about it later, but it was cool that the arrogant Gray Elf Wizard made friends with the god of The Tainted Ones, where the tainted one in the group, and respectful Paladin pissed him off). And then it all went to hell again.

As I said, he is a senior in high school (for another week or two now) and will be going to college in the fall. So his mother decided he needs to spend almost every waking moment with her. We don’t know why and his father is just as confused by it as the rest of us. He is going to college locally and will be living at home at home with his parents. The rest of the D&D group all have our theories but he swears his mother is the reason.

Now we have a backup plan. It is called Joey’s Infinite Dungeons. What that is a hack and slash inter-dimensional dungeon where no area past a portal is bigger then the battle mat we use. Sometimes it is an actual dungeon setting; sometimes it is an open field, or a dense forest. All characters were created at level 17 so encounters can be made just a little more interesting and difficult. However many games got cancelled anyways. First, we are all scouts and two of us are still very active adult leaders in our respective units and the Order of the Arrow (OA) so many Saturday’s we have to cancel because of obligations related to that. The other guy is a scout and member of the OA but not active. But, this past summer he got married, joined the Masons and is very active in his church so a lot of his time gets taken up by his wife (How dare she want to spend time with her husband lol), his induction, and now officer ship in the Masons and Church activities.

So now we are lucky to play once a month. And just to give and example, the next three weeks we have cancelled the game. This coming Saturday the one guys church is participating in some sort breast cancer fundraiser (Yes, let us help cancer and raise money for it. YAY CANCER! (I know bad joke, sorry)) and the other guy his running a Changeling game (WoD) which I was the only one invited to participate in of the D&D group on Saturday (SO this month the Changeling game being a Saturday worked out ok). The next weekend I will be at a scout camp somewhere in upstate NY for the Section Conclave and the weekend after that one of the guys I hung out with while working on my second college degree is turning 21 and his parents are throwing him a party and required him to get people from school to attend or they were going to cut him off so I am going to that.

So will we ever get past this cancelling of the games? I hope so.

As I said I haven’t played a 4th edition game yet so my opinion of character creation in 4th edition can change when I finally play a game (It will probably be a long time because none of my group wants to try it but me).

No when I used bluff, diplomacy and Intimidate for an example I made a mistake. I got fixed on it because of something I was doing and misplaced it in my head and it ended up in here. That was just a stupid mistake on my part.

I agree that skills in 4th edition are probably more flexible. However I believe that to be a problem in its self. For example, look at Athletics. Someone who is good at climbing might not be a good swimmer. Someone might be a good swimmer but couldn’t jump more than an inch to save their life. In 4th edition if you take athletics as a skill you are good at climbing, jumping and swimming. Now there are some feats that will boost certain aspects of a skill, or at least appears that way. Example: Sure Climber. It allows you to climb at normal speed and +1 to all Athletic checks. So in 4th edition if you are good in one thing you are good in all things. 3x allows you to be good at one thing but not necessarily all. Now before you jump down my throat I am also away if the player is a good role player he will be able to decide on his and role play out if he is good at climbing but not at swimming. But that is still hard to do.

RE: Patriarch
I really like your idea of adding fluff to skills where characters explain how and/or why they are good at a skill.

My next 4th edition character should be out next week (classes just started so my time became more limited, and I am currently getting over a cold). I look forward to more comments so keep them coming.

A few days ago I made the first of my Character Counts posts. I made a 3.5 and a 4th edition version of the character. It was my first time making a 4th edition character. I was very proud of myself for making one with as far as I can tell I didn’t make any screw-ups like not giving Arthur too many or too little powers, feats, trained skills or completely messing up HP or AC calculations. If I did, please leave a comment letting me know what I screwed-up.

Before I get into talking about my opinion of character creation in 4th edition vs. 3.5 let me share with you how I normally go about creating characters, whether a PC or NPC)

When I create a character, PC or NPC, I like to think about my character’s basic personality, goals and normal means of achieving those goals. The last of those three quite often leads me to choosing its class (at least one in the case if I [later] decide to multiclass).

Then I come up with ability scores. Sometimes I roll the dice (Normally 4D6 drop the lowest) and sometimes I just pull arbitrary numbers out of the air and place them. After that I start to think about (If I haven’t already) about the characters background. What are some of the events of a character’s history that leads them to being what they are by the time they are first level. This is also where I have chosen race for the character. Then I give the character its first level feats and skills.

Now if the character is going to be above first level (for NPCs this is almost always true) I look back at my initial vision of the character and begin leveling up the character. I normally level up to whatever level I want/need the character to be. Then I do skills and feats. If the character is multi-class or has a prestige class (there is proof that I still look at character creation through the eyes of a 3.5 player) I will level up one class at a time give skills and feats. For example, if I were making a 15 character that was a Bard [5]/Assassin [5]/Shadowdancer [5] (very similar to one of the characters I will be presenting in a few weeks in a Character Counts article). I will level the character to a level 5 bard and give skills and feats, then do the same thing for all 5 of the assassin levels and so forth)

After that I get the character equipment and spells if it is a spell caster (Remember for wizards some of that starting money will go towards learning spells that aren’t gained during the level up process)

Now that the basics of my character creation process is out there I guess it is time for me to give you my opinion of character creation in fourth edition compared to 3.5. I think character creation in 4th edition.

It SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The reason I say that is it doesn’t leave room for character customization other than for combat. Here is a simple example. It 3.5 let’s say I have a character (whether or not it started that way) who is good at speaking and convincing people of things. To get that in 3.5 when you create the character you would put some skill points in diplomacy and/or bluff (and/or intimidate) when you make the character and[/or] when you leveled up. I find that the combining of skills in 4th edition adds to this limitation.

No I haven’t actually played a 4th edition game. Now after I play a game Maybe I will feel differently but I feel 4th edition character creation is way too rigid and doesn’t lead to creativity as 3x editions did.

Below you will find a link to a 3.5 version of the character and another to a 4th edition version of the character. These are full character sheets in an Adobe PDF file not just stat blocks. Please feel free to make simple stat blocks for your use.

Then I have any notes on my process of creating the character. After that is the background of the character. I tried to make it as complete as possible. After that is the characters personality and how it might react in some generalized situations followed by some physical descriptions.

Arthur Dannenberg – Level 1 – 3.5e
Arthur Dannenberg Level_1 – 3.5e Spellbook
Arthur Dannenberg Level_1 – 4e

Character Creation Notes

This was my first time making a character for 4th Edition. Besides being a new system I found it to be a lot more confusing than any other system I ever played for the first time before. So please be sure to double check that I put the correct information in the correct place. If I screwed something up please let me know so I make the appropriate corrections.

For Ability Scores I used PC Gens ability generator set to 4D6 reroll 1s and drop the lowest. Where it put the scores is where I left them. That is why I chose to make Arthur a wizard. I used the same numbers for the 4th edition. I did NOT give him the +2 to an ability score that humans normally receive in 4th Edition

For Starting money, height, weight and age I actually rolled the dice and used the charts from chapter 6 (Chapter 7 in the case of money) of the 3.5 PHB. The 4th edition version he got the standard 100gp.

The 4th edition sheet has no space for background, personality or description. So I put the physical descriptions in the Other Notes Section. I placed the Character Personality in the Notes/Photo Section. No space anywhere for the Background so I didn’t put it on the sheet. It is in the 3.5 sheet and on this post.

Character Background

Arthur was born to an average working class family in the city. When he was a young child he saw a wizard casting some spells on the street. He was amazed by what he saw and decided he wanted to be able to do that. Whenever he could get away from his parents he would try to find this Wizard and follow him around and always watch his performances. After a while Arthur was starting to mimic the gestures and vocals of the spells used in this Wizards performance. Obviously nothing happened when Arthur did this but his mimicry was just so perfect the Wizard took notice. The Wizards name was Dion Laughstrang and he went to Arthur’s parent’s and offered to take Arthur as an apprentice when he 8yrs old. Arthur’s parents reluctantly agreed, after all Arthur was their only living child. All of their other children died not long after child birth and were very protective of Arthur.

This apprenticeship was a little different from what most apprenticeships. Arthur continued to live with his parents and would meet with Dion two or three times a week for lessons. This is because Dion was a poor Wizard who blew most of the money he earned on Ale in one of the local inns every night and very often would forget to pay for a room and lived much of the time on the streets. Very often others would tell him not to listen to Dion. That he was a mediocre wizard at best, and that was when he was sober. However, Arthur refused to believe what they said about the man he idolized; the man who introduced, and teaching him the arcane arts, something no other wizard in the city would have done because of his families lack of social rank.

Both of Arthur’s parents were killed during a riot in the city when he was 13. He inherited the tiny home and invited Dion to move in with him which he did. The morning of his 20th Birthday Arthur had found that Dion was no longer there. He burned all of his items accept for a small wooden medallion of Boccob on a small copper chain, his diary and a note which read:

“When I came to this city 15 years ago I didn’t expect to stay for more than one or two months. Although I had all the coin I needed I decided to entertain the folk with some of my abilities and I noticed a small boy who was completely enthralled by what I was doing. So I stayed longer performing these mediocre tricks and found this boy was almost always there watching, completely mesmerized. I had to make many deals and sacrifices to do it, but it was worth it to stay here. But now I must keep up my end of the deal. It is ok though. I have taught you everything you need to know for now. The rest will come as you go along. I have left you my two most precious belongings. I hope they will serve you well.”

Arthur started to read the diary and couldn’t believe all the Dion has done, the people he met, the places he has been and how he may have influenced the world as they all know it today. He spent most of the year trying to convince the people, particularly the wizard’s academy and all the others who laughed at Dion. But they all continued to laugh saying it was just stories he probably heard at the inn of the doings of others. After a while Arthur gave up and though he had his doubts he decided to set off to see if what in the diary was true.

Character Personality

Arthur is very passionate about everything he does. He wears his emotions on his sleeve.

He would have words with anyone who would say anything against his mentor, Dion Laughstrang.

Wherever he goes he follows the laws of the city he grew up in, even if he were thousands of miles away and those laws and the principles and intent of them had no meaning where he was.

He is relatively naiveté about the greater world

Character Description

Arthur’s brown hair is short and always messy.

Hanging off of his belt is a copper chain which is connected to a wooden medallion bearing Boccob’s (Ioun’s) symbol which is tucked into his belt pouch.

His clothes, though cleaned whenever possible always seem to be dirty and to those who don’t know him he would appear to be a homeless beggar.

If you are one of those few people who live under a rock and have never been to the site run by a Red Dragon and his pet you should head out to it and give it a read. It is definitely one of the, if not the, best RPG blogs out there.

Again, Congrats to Expy, Yax and all the other winners of this year’s ENnies.

Greywulf’s Lair – If I was the King of Wizards
Greywolf list many of the problems he sees with D&D 4 Edition, the minis and Wizards of the Coast in General. I can’t help but to agree with each one. It is a great read no matter what you think about 4th Edition

The Geek Gazette – 4e is perfect! Well, except for the mistakes…While at it go check out the Geek Gazette who gave us a response to Greywulf’s post and expanded upon it

SciFi Wire – Wire Cracks Stargate Command
For those of you who are fans of Stargate, War Games, Jeremiah as well as many other shows this may be an interesting article for you because it is all about the actual Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base.

Critical Hits – Forget OD&D and AD&D: Play DD&D
This is an old post but it is definately worth looking at; especially if you are like me and love you some alcohol because it is a D&D Drinking Game which is going to be play tested at GenCon this weekend. (they actually played it at least once so far)

Gnome Stew – Stat generation
An article about a new system that will even out your player stat scores a little bit. I know I am going to try it out.

Greywulf’s Lair – The value of Dungeons & Dragons
Greywulf gives us solid economic reasons as why we should all play D&D (and other RPGs in general)

Stupid Ranger – How to move from DM to Player Character…
Dante tells us DMs who to go back to being just a PC. Something that I know from personal experience is a hard transition.

Dries Buytaert – PHP is dead … long live PHP!
As many of you have probably heard by now I have been a wannabe web developer since 1997. PHP is a web development language I have been using liek many others, professional and amatuers alike since 1999. If you read any blogs besides this one you will notice many of the pages end with .php instead of .html (or htm). That because it is one (if not THE) most popular scripting language of the web. This is an interesting article on it the current version of the language and why people (mainly servers) are not transitioning to it even though it has been out for over 2 (3?) years.

Greg’s Blog – So Many Untapped PHP Features
This article is related to the above one with some additional information

Suddenly her attention was grabbed by two figures walking into the tavern. Not too many of the bigger races live in the Gnomish city of Grubbelthorpe. Admittedly the few who did came to this tavern since it was the only one tall enough for the bigger races. One was a little taller than the other with blond hair and a longsword hanging off his hip. Not bad looking for a human. The other was a bit more mysterious she thought to herself. He was wearing a black cloak with its hood up and kept tight around his head that she couldn’t see his face and his hands were covered by black gloves. Very unusual clothes for the summer, but mysterious cloaked figures in this tavern were not unusual.

They walked right up to Old Jack, the human owner and barkeep of the tavern. They asked him something and he pointed out Gwen and each of her companions. They followed Jack finger towards each of them, then asked him who the leader was. Gwen spoke up quite loudly to ensure her companions would take notice. “I’m the one you talk to.” Gwen had spent years training her ears to hear that which doesn’t want to be heard. Apparently they didn’t know this, or at least the blond one didn’t. They walked over and Gwen was able to get a closer look at the one with the hood. But she couldn’t see much since he was wearing a veiled mask which effectively kept his face hidden. “We have a job which requires the talents of you and…your party.” Said the blond one.

“Well first I need a drink. Jack, get me a drink…” Stecnhfeng spoke up, “ME TOO!” “And put it on their tab, well his tab.” Said Gwen pointing at the masked figure. “I don’t like people who wear masks and keep their face hidden.” The hooded figure grunted and nodded at Jack. The serving wench brought over a drink and handed it over to Gwen and then brought one over to Stenchfeng as quickly as she could as not to be close to the 7’ tall Half-Orc for more than a few seconds. During this time Razeal was slowly walking around to get a better view of the coming conversation. No one seemed to notice.

“So what is your name?” The blond one spoke up “My name is Thomas.” “And your friend’s name?” “His name is Stephan” Gwen then asked if his friend can speak.

The masked guy finally spoke up in a very deep voice said “yes I can and if this useless banter is done I have a job for you.” Gwen shifted and made a slightly more serious face. “I would like you to retrieve an item for me. “Does it involve stealing …or killing?” Thomas pulled out a small purse and emptied a lot of gems onto the table and Stephan responded “Will that be a problem?” “No, it won…..”And Stenchfeng screamed out “Killing good!”

Darren stood up with his eyes glowing and moved behind Stephan and Thomas and looked them both up and down. Gwen hated when he did that. It didn’t matter which divine power he was tapping into, it was never good for her when he did that. It always meant more work for her and potentially less money in her purse. Stephan pulled out a scroll from his sleeve and unrolled it on the table. It had a color picture of a scepter. It was made of gold with 3 gems on one end and a red gem on the other. The handle had a ring of gems going around it. “So who has this item and where do we find it?” It is currently in the possession of Kerrasslor…” Thomas pulls out a scroll and unrolls it. “he is located in a mountain West of Mount Yetternach.”

“So do we have a deal?” asked Stephan. Darren walked between Stephan and Gwen and tapped the golden end of his quarterstaff up and taps it against Stephan just under the neck. It made a small clank. “What is this?” Darren asked. “It is a family heirloom and is of no importance to you.” He replied. “Does it have anything to do this scepter you want us to look for?”
“It is not a scepter. It is a key and belongs to my family! Now do we have a deal or not?”
“How much does this job pay?” piped up Gwen.

Stephan looked over and nodded towards Thomas and Thomas pulled out a decent sized purse. He opened it up spilled its contents on the table. As its contents fell onto the table Gwen’s eyes opened in amazement which was quickly replaced by her normal greedy eyes when ever so much money was laid out before her. “It pays twenty thousand in gems, ahead of time plus you can keep whatever you find amongst Kerrasslor’s possessions, minus the key.” Said Thomas.

“Yes, we….” Gwen was cut off by Darren. “Before we can agree we would like to see the amulet you are wearing around your neck. You don’t need to even take it off” Stephan and Darren stared each other down, or at least Gwen thought they were. It was hard to tell since Stephan was wearing a mask. Thomas went to shove the gems back into the purse. Gwen quickly rushed out one hand and grabbed his hand while her other hand grabbed the hilt of GWEE. “I wouldn’t. We didn’t say we didn’t have a deal.”

Stephan then said “It’s ok Thomas, I will show them. I will be right back.”Gwen and Thomas both relaxed their arms, Gwen palming one of the gems as she did, and Stephan walked out of the bar. Darren pulled out his journal and began making some sort of notes.

“So where are you and he from?” Gwen asked Thomas.
“We’re from Corinath”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been there. It’s in the north right?”
“That is north of Mount Yetternach isn’t it?”
“Yes it is.”
“Does Stephan ever take that mask off?”
“I’m sure he does, but I have never seen him without it on.”
“Do you know why he wears it?”
“Some sort of deformity that supposedly runs in his family.”

After a minute or two Stephan came back in but now the amulet was hanging outside of shirt and mask. Darren began examining the amulet and Gwen jumped off of the table and onto Darren’s shoulder. She too was staring at the amulet. Darren reached out his hand towards the amulet just a little and looked up at Stephan. “May I?” Stephan grunted and nodded. Slowly Darren reached around the amulet, felt around all the edges and bumps in it. He looked as closely as he could without actually ripping the thing off of the big man’s neck.

Darren and Gwen both slyly glanced over to the shady spot on the far wall where Raziel was sitting and he nodded towards Darren and Gwen. “We have deal” Said Darren as he let go of the amulet and sat down. “May we keep this scroll?” “No, I need it back.” Darren started copying the picture of this scepter like key into his notes. Gwen hopped off of Darren’s shoulder onto the floor. “So how do we get this key to you once we have it?” Gwen asked. “Thomas here will be staying in town. Just bring it to him once you have it.”

Darren finished copying the drawing into his notebook and handed it back to Stephan. Stephan began rolling it up and Darren noticed that there was writing on the back. “Wait a second.” Darren jumped out of his chair and as he did Gwen jumped up onto his shoulders and Stephan stopped rolling up the parchment. “Let me see that parchment again?” Stephan handed it to Darren. He turned it around and started to copy the text. He just two characters down when Stephen took back the parchment and rolled it up and put it up his sleeve. “That has no bearing on your job.”

Stephan took a deep breath and sounding much calmer then he did a second ago. “Thomas our business here is done. Leave them their pay and let us go.”

So I thought it would be interesting to post in character story of the adventure. However I am a slow writer. Even slower when it comes to writing stories like this. We started the adventure about a month and a half ago; unfortunately he had to cancel several games. We cancelled one week for Billy’s wedding, one week because Mike was sick and one week because Mike’s transportation was hijacked by his family and he didn’t find out until it was too late to do anything about it.

So before we get into the adventure we should probably meet the Characters.

Gwurcyn: Female Gnome Thief played by me
Daren Leclare: Male Human Cleric of Darren played by me
Stenchfeng: Male Half-Orc Fighter
Raziel: Male Tainted (a Homebrew Race) Monk Played by Domenick
Gorath: Male Half-Orc Fighter played by Domenick

As you may have noticed some of us are playing 2 characters. There are reasons for that. Our group became smaller during the summer. We lost Ron for a variety of reasons. We lost Greg, at least temporarily because his job gave him Saturday Evening shifts and Billy got married so we figured he won’t be around as much as he was, despite what he says.

Village Rivalry
Two neighboring villages (towns, cities, kingdoms whatever floats your boats) have had a rivalry longer than anyone can remember. Unknown to either village they are both at the edge of territories of two different pranksters, Cooper Dragons to be precise. These two dragons have a rivalry of their own. These two villages have become the latest targets of the rivalry of the two dragons. The villages keep blaming each other for the recent troubles. If the pranks don’t stop soon there may be a battle between the two villages. So it will be up to the PCs to find out who is behind the problems and find a way to stop it.

Here are three possible ways the players can stop the Cooper Dragons
Obviously combat is possible, but Cooper Dragons prefer not to fight and if they do it can be very dangerous for the PCs
Speak to the dragons and convince them that they are harming the villages greatly
Defeat the dragons using wit, humor and riddles because Cooper Dragons take wit, humor and riddles very seriously

Missing Bard
A bard (or any charismatic person) has gone missing and the PCs are hired to find them. The bard is known as a decent conversationalist. He went traveling around a nearby dessert and found his way into a Brass Dragons lair. So the Brass Dragon has been keeping the Bard for conversation.

4th Edition Note
The Monster Manual does mention good dragons but does not give stats for any. They do not mention Brass or Bronze Dragons and add Iron and Adamantine Dragons to the list. So you will have to wait for their 4th Edition Dragon Supplement to really run a 4th edition Metallic Dragon encounter.

The Encounter

Your PCs have entered some buried ruins. They are controlled by two factions. One is a faction of Kobolds and the other a faction of Goblins. The Kobolds have somehow gotten their hands on a wyrmling White Dragon which they planned to use against the Goblins to gain control of the ruins. Unfortunately for the Kobolds is that they can’t actually control the Dragon and it killed one of its handlers and walked off. At the same time a Goblin war party was heading to attack the kobolds and saw the raging dragon and tried to run away. Somehow they managed to lock the Dragon in a room.

There are several possible ways to have your players come across this Dragon.

• The first is they randomly come across this room.
• They meet the Kobolds and they offer the PCs an assortment of treasures (at least one of which should be a minor magic item of some sort) to get their pet back for them
• They meet the Goblins who offer the PCs an assortment of treasures to kill the Kobolds horrible monster

Maybe you don’t want them to fight a Dragon. Maybe you want to make it more enticing to help the Dragon. Hey, a Dragon getting out of being imprisoned can have a long term affect on your campaign world. It could also be a helpful friend (though more likely for long lived races like Elves and Dwarfs, not short life spanned races like Humans or Half-Orcs). So instead of a White Dragon make it a good Dragon (I suggest not a Gold Dragon) and the PCs have to assist it in escaping.

Unfortunately for them there is always a little debate about how often they should be used in a game. If you want to see some of this debate you can find it on ENWorld. My personal opinion is that they should be used. No, not every adventure should have a dragon but hey, they are included in the game for a reason; to be used.

Dragons can be a great challenge for parties from 1st level all the way through epic levels. You might now be saying, “But wait a second, Dragons for a first level party? Aren’t they great big creatures who breathe fire and send spells flying?” And you would be correct, if you were talking about Great Wyrm Red or Gold Dragons. However there is a whole spectrum of dragons (literally) which come in an assortment of sizes and ages.

I hope to hear from all of you about your opinion on the subject and next time we will have some examples of Dragon encounters.

Now let’s see what we get when a Red Dragon runs a blog. When you first type in the blog’s address (the URL for you techies) you come to a cool looking front page that looks like it is coming out of the screen at you. I think that is awesome. Now this page has of course the name of the site and a small description under it. Below that are links to various other parts of the site. I’ll go into a little bit more detail about them in a second, just let me finish the front page first. Now right below that is an advertisement for 4th Editon. At first I didn’t realize it was ad ad. I just thought it was a cool animated banner. Personally I hope he never changes it.

Now below that ad there are two posts listed on the left. One is the featured article and the other, at least at the moment is site related post. Now below that it gets divided into two columns. The left most column is a list of the recent posts and the right is a list of series that they have done. All the way on the right side of the page is the sidebar which you will see on all the others parts of the page. This sidebar has the usual suspects, an RSS feed, an email subscription, links, recent posts, related posts and a poll.

Overall I love the design of the site. It is simple and elegant and even though it has ads it is not the annoying Google AdSense or get in your face and make the site look cheesy and crappy ads. Great work guys

Now let’s talk about the reason we all go to blogs to begin with, the actual content. Remember before when I said I would more about those other parts of his page, well now you can stop holding your breath because I am now. Of course it has an About Us page. This is where Expy begins his plans lulling you into a calm about a Red Dragon being involved in a web site and claims to just be a mascot for Dungeon Mastering. Now you will notice three really cool sounding links; Free Adventures, Instant Campaign Builder and Instant World Builder. Expy and Yax has under the Free Adventures a list of 83 FREE, adventures and where to get them. Now to my knowledge neither Expy or his (probably Kolbold) worshipper Yax made any of them but none the less it is awesome to have such a list because there are so many free adventures out there it is sometimes hard to many of them.

The Instant Campaign and Instant World Builders are an awesome tool for both new and experienced DMs (or GMs if you prefer the generic not cool sounding title). Now these are on-line tools that will do the work for you. They are both PDFs created by Expy and Yax which give guidelines on how to create your very own campaigns and campaign worlds without doing too much work. They are based off of a series they did back in the day with tips, tricks, suggestion from those who left comments on the series. Please make sure you download (AND READ) them. They are worth every byte of disk space on your hard drive and the 40 to 60 minutes it will take to read both in their entirty.

Expy has Yax normally posting at least one post a day normally. Sometimes there are two or three posts. Very rarely (if ever) are there no new posts. Many of the articles become part of a series of articles. That is how the Instant Campaign and World Builder started. Currently he has a series called “Pimp My Character” This series just started and Expy and Yax don’t do too much of the work, but let the viewers do it. (They seem to be big into having community participation). How this series works is that people had to send in a basic character concept of no more than 30 words. Then the community would help that person flesh out the character a bit by giving a back-story, list of abilities and powers which could be cool or how the character can fit into an adventuring party. It was also revealed after the first pimping that if more than 50 people leave a comment helping to pimp out this character some of Expy’s hoard would be used to get an character sketch done for this character. So go and help Ian pimp out his character and get a character sketch.

There are two days a week in which there are regularly posted items. One is some very interesting quizzes every Sunday. These quizzes vary in challenge week by week but none are so easy where you will sit there and go “Why should I bother?” I do have one gripe with these quizzes. It modifies your score based on some psychological profiling modifier which add or take away from your score. However it seems to be a random number and not a set system of improving this modifier. But the quizzes are for fun and are not, normally, major competitions. The other is Monday Morning Speed Linking where several sites are listed for your perusal. They are normally somehow RPG related. Expy does find some awesome sites.

PROs

• Run by a Red Dragon
• Awesome design
• Posts often
• Posts are interesting and useful
• Excellent use of graphics
• Great links

CONs

• D&D Books Page link is merely an advertisement (however if you are buying D&D books and you like the site use it so they get some cash to keep producing an awesome site)
• Poll is all the way on the bottom of the sidebar
• The DAMN psychological profiling modifier on the quizzes

On the Joey Scale of 10 being the perfect site and 0 being why did I bother to ever look at this site Dungeon Mastering has earned a 9.5 So head on over to Dungeon Mastering and give it a try. You won’t be sorry, I promise you, unless you anger the Red Dragon of course.