Let me axe you something...

This was a little bit of Frankenstein work. From shoulder to wrist, this is a Terminator arm from the Dark Angels upgrade sprue. I cut the hand (and Stormbolter) off, then stuck on the axe (with hand) from the Space Wolves Terminators box. I did not like the arm that was supposed to go with this axe – I really needed the Wolf King to hold his axe triumphantly, and that arm wasn’t doing it. I pushed the arm out further to his right by putting in a spacer (aka “a tiny piece of plastic trimmed from a sprue”) at the shoulder joint.

This crappy picture kind of shows the spacer in the shoulder... but uh... not well.

For the other arm, I wanted to do something close to the original “Wolf King” – Logan Grimnar of the Space Wolves. Logan has a storm bolter attached to the back of his left wrist. Of course, so do the Grey Knights. So, I grabbed a Grey Knight Terminator arm, storm bolter, and hand, and I glued those on.

The Grey Knight Terminator box is probably the best box of minis in production right now.

To fill in some of the gaps in the right arm due to X-treme Posing™ I pulled out my Green Putty (different from Green Stuff) and started thoughtlessly jamming it in the joint.

Green Putty is a pretty good filler which deserves its own post.

And here’s a poor shot of the mini so far. (Like I said, the pictures do get better later as I learn how to better use the DSLR… but for this one, I didn’t quite have it.)

Seriously, I will get better with the focus and whatnot.

Next time, we’ll try and put a nifty wolf pelt and wolf head on the Wolf King… and it won’t quite work the first time. Plus, a beard and hair that don’t quite work the first time!

Well, at least it's clean!

Now I have to pose this body so that the Wolf King can triumphantly grind his boots into his Black Legion foe. To do that, I cut straight through at the hip joint.

Cutting at the right place, at the right angle, is essential to making the pose look good.

I spent a lot of time with the leg, posing it and making sure it would look right. The most important part is to make the lower leg straight – the leg should be completely vertical from the knee down to the foot. To make it work, I cut out a diagonal piece from behind the knee, then pushed the lower leg back on that cut and glued it in place.

The leg is posed. (You can also see I'm about to fill a mold of that Chaos power fist to further decorate the base.)

The next issue was the head – I wanted him to look pretty unique, so the regular Space Wolves heads were right out (they’re cool, but I can easily pick them out of a lineup). I remembered I wasn’t going to use my Marneus Calgar head (in fact, I’m using a Space Wolves head in his body to make my Space Marine Chapter Master), so I pulled that out and glued it in place (with the plan that I’d Green Stuff a beard and more hair).

The head is out of focus. Oops. Trust me, better pictures come later when I realize manual focus is far better for macro shots on my wife's DSLR.

I also added the molded power fist to the base, which came out very nicely.

The Chaos Lord's power fist arm lays splayed from his body. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

A reverse angle on the Wolf King's fallen enemy - this angle makes it hard to make out, but the Chaos Lord

Another angle on the base decoration

In part 3, the Wolf King gets arms! Stay tuned!

Don’t worry – they’re still on the shelf! It’s cold and I don’t have a great place for priming right now, so some of the things waiting for painting are… still waiting. In the mean time, I’ve started working on a Wolf King to lead my wannabe Space Wolves Chapter (which I was calling “The Grey Wolves,” until I realized it confuses them with my Grey Knights for friends I’m trying to introduce to 40k… so uh… they need a new name.)

I’m going to give an absolute step-by-step on creating “Magnus Sorensen,” the Wolf King. He’s a nice Frankenstein monster of a mini, but he came out much as I hoped, so I’m very excited. Let’s get started!

First, I began with a Terminator from Assault on Black Reach. The body had been filed and cleaned of its Imperial symbols because I was going to use it for Chaos… but then I didn’t. So, the body is a bit barren.

The basic Terminator body...

But y’know… let’s take a step back. I want this guy to be pretty epic, right? In fact, the “Grey Wolves” have a history with the Black Legion – they hate them. So let’s decorate Magnus Sorensen’s base appropriately. How about the corpse of a fallen Black Legion Chaos Lord? That would be badass… I just happen to have a Chaos Lord handy…

A Chaos Lord in Terminator armor, plus a Chaos power fist...

Now, I don’t want to scrap my lovely Chaos Lord, but… if I could somehow make a mold of the front of his body, that’d be perfect for decorating the base, right? It just so happens I have some of this stuff called Instant Mold…

The Chaos Lord is covered in some kinda goo.

Instant Mold is pretty cool. It needs its own post, really. Basically, you heat it up in very hot (nearly boiling) water and it becomes very, very soft. You press the mold over the piece, you wait for it to cool, and then you pull it off. (The Chaos power fist pictured above will be used in another mold, as you’ll see later.)

Chaos Mold!

Now, we mix some Green Stuff and put it in the mold. I’m not making a big 3D piece, so I fill the mold with Green Stuff and made the back side flat. That way, it will lay nicely on the base.

Death to the Traitor!

Awesome. Now, I just have to pose the Terminator body to be standing astride the body of the fallen Chaos Lord… but for that, you have to wait for Part 2!

There was unevenness in the front of the Land Raider as well (that’s just how it goes with resin bits, really), so I pounded some Green Stuff in there too. This is a picture of the rough work (before I trimmed and sanded it):

With the Green Stuff initially in place, the Achilles is really starting to come together. (I should come up with a name for it, like uh… Death Skull Angel Death… that might be too long, though).

So, then I cleaned up the Green Stuff and fitted the guns on. I glued the sponson (the side gun) mounts into the door holes, but the multi-meltas, the Thunderfire Cannon, the sponson top, bottom, and sponson gun pole are not glued in place. It’s too hard to paint in those crevices.

This thing looks great! I am going to put a magnet under the hatch before I glue it on, then I’ll magnetize the storm bolter and HK missile in case I care to stick them on at some point in the future. (I don’t really see that happening, given that the thing is bristling with firepower already, and 10 points for a couple bolt shots isn’t usually going to be as good as the same 10 points spent somewhere inside a Tactical Squad.)

So, it’s nearly ready to primer, and then the painting can start!

Edit: I forgot to note that, with the reaper decorations in the front nooks, the armor plating that is hanging out over top of the tracks had to be trimmed down. This trimming is imperfect, so before I paint, I’m going to try Squadron’s “Green Putty” in those gaps. This will be the first time I use Green Putty as opposed to Green Stuff, so it’ll be a fun experiment (as soon as my Green Putty arrives)!

First, I’ve been putting together some bits from Scibor to decorate my Land Raider Achilles. These beautiful pieces are decorated with the Grim Reaper, complementing the commander who rides in the Land Raider, Captain Tharsis the Grim. Here are some photos…

I had to cut a big hole in the side of the Land Raider first:

Then I placed the (50mm square) reaper plate in the hole (this is the opposite side from the previous photo).

I glued sprues across the back, providing both a glue point and a way to keep the plates basically straight:

Here’s a shot of the Land Raider sides and top (with additional reaper plates, which did not require cutting big holes in the Land Raider):

Of course, I need to put some Green Stuff borders around the big plates – there are big gaps (neither my knife nor Scibor’s plates were perfect) and the plates obviously don’t match the contours of the tank. I debated cutting the back corners of the big reaper plates to match the angle of the back of the Land Raider – that might have looked better, but I think framing the square plates will look good.

If I did this again, I would consider trimming off the “background” of each reaper image and rounding the sides and bottoms of the plates. This might make them stand out, kind of like statues more than engravings. Then I could just smooth down the Land Raider and glue the “statues” to the sides. That might fit onto the tank better. Still, cutting out the plastic means the plates sit into the sides of the tank, rather than sticking out of the sides. I do think a clean border around the “plates” will look great… all I need to do is be skilled with my sculpting!

Second, I worked on two more Captains for my Space Marine army. I’m pretty keen on heavily customized Captains… and when I run out of Captains, I’ll do Honor Guard. And when I run out of Honor Guard, my sergeants are going to start looking real good.

Introducing Atlan the Doughty, Captain of the Immortals (1st Company)…

Atlan is a Scibor body (looks kind of like an Adeptus Custodes to me!) with Scibor shoulders and Grey Knight Terminator arms. He is “counts as” Vulkan He’stan, so that’s artificer armor, a relic blade, and a heavy flamer.

Alongside him is Ptolomaeus the Unyielding, Captain of the 3rd Company…

Captain Ptolomaeus is blurry, but he’s basically a Force Commander kit with some Green stuff on his legs and arms from Sanguinary Guard. I love the Sanguinary Guard bits, so you’ll see them scattered around as I work my way through the box. I also did some work to add wings to his helmet, which doesn’t look great here. He needs a bit more work, but he has artificer armor, a power sword, and a plasma pistol (and he “counts as” Cato Sicarius).

Clearly, I need to take better pictures, but I don’t have an ideal setup right now…

And… I should really be painting, but uh… I avoid painting like the plague. I think my fear that my painting isn’t good prevents me from painting, which means I don’t get practice, which means I don’t get better. I just need to sit down and do it… but I haven’t yet!

Thanks for reading – more to come soon!

Now, More About Power Cards…

The Warhammer 40k game is fun, but its rules are not organized well in current rulebooks. (I hear the 6th edition rulebook will be well-organized.) Thus, teaching a new player can be a pain. But… what if there were handy cards to hand the new player as a reference?

Of course, the default Magic card style isn’t really great for 40k stats, is it? It could work a little better for special abilities like psychic powers…

That’s a little better, but it doesn’t help us remember the WS of an Ork Loota. What if someone were to make a template that could easily display 40k character stats, vehicle stats, weapon stats or special rules so we could reference them easily during the game?

The templates aren’t done yet, but the first one (for infantry, characters and other things with wounds) came out very nicely. I’ll still need to finish a vehicle (possibly also a walker) template, a weapon template (with room for their rules) and two ‘generic’ templates (one with an image slot and a text box, and one that’s just a big text box).

Remember folks, Gamer + Graphic Designer + Programmer = Super Nerd… and I am that Super Nerd.

When Heroes of Shadow came out, I flipped through it, noticed the “Vampire” class and thought, “What the what now?” But I quickly became used to the idea of “Vampire” as a character class. After all, anyone of any race can become a vampire, and “vampire” defines the powers and abilities of the character. And, if you want to play a Vampire Paladin or something, there are still reasonable ways to accomplish that (like the Vampire heritage feat, or hybrid Vampire, which has playtest rules).

The Vampire class is weird, though. It’s an implement user – ki focuses and holy symbols, for some reason. It’s an “Essentials” class, so it doesn’t have the power choices of the Player’s Handbook classes. But you do get to drink blood (basically), turn into a bat (if you want to) and generally be creepy and lurk in the shadows. Fun times!

I decided, then, that I would play a Vampire when the opportunity came up in our Living Forgotten Realms game. I was making this character at 11th level so, while I didn’t have any choices of encounter powers or daily powers (the Vampire class has set powers and few choices), I would need to pick 7 feats, some magical gear and stuff like that. Intrepid explorer that I am, I went to the internet to find recommendations for Vampire choices.

Now, I am not really a min-maxing guy, but I like a little optimization, I like combos, and I like to contribute effectively to my party’s success. So, I try to make characters who can hold their own when the chips are down and the solo is doing a burst 5 that dazes.

And that is how I found out that the internet hates the Vampire class. From the character optimization forum at wizards.com to the various reviews of the class around the net, everyone was coming down hard on the Vampire. It made me sad. It also made me double down on my Vampire – I was going to find a way to make this guy work.

“I Vant to Optimize Your DPR.”

The main complaint of Teh Intarwebs is that Vampire doesn’t have the damage output potential of other classes (and note here the word “potential”). But, to the Internet MinMaxers, if you can’t do 30 damage a turn before level 10, then your existence isn’t justified. That’s not really the way the game goes – you don’t (always) just stand there and roll attacks against a target for an entire encounter.

Firstly – there are no Vampire-specific feats (yet?) or vampire-specific magic items (yet?), but let’s look on the bright side – the field is wide open. In fact, most other classes get locked into feats because their build requires X, Y or Z. The Vampire has no class feats, but that also means you aren’t locked into taking those feats. You can take the excellent “Superior Defense” feats, Skill Focuses, etc. Of course, that isn’t going to “MinMax” your Vampire, but he or she will end up being the hero in a Skill Challenge or an elusive target for his or her foes.

When it comes to feats, I like the Superior Defense feats on a Vampire. Vampires look flimsy when you see their “Healing Surges: 2″ line, but because they gain regeneration when bloodied, because they steal healing surges and can hold more than the 2 they start with, and because one extra healing surge (or one surge from a buddy) heals them to full HP at the end of an encounter, Vampires are resilient Strikers. Combine that with some Superior Defenses and you’re a hard target (which is good, because you’re really a melee character).

Another option is to Multiclass with your feats. This doesn’t open up a great variety of options, but a few aren’t too bad. Remember, you’re an implement class, so taking Rogue for sneak attack doesn’t work. If you’re looking for some damage, check out Ranger – you get Hunter’s Quarry for two turns (Hint: It’s a minor action, and it lasts until the end of your next turn) which means a possible +2d6 damage per encounter at Heroic tier. Multiclass skills are grand because they grant an extra trained skill, which again makes you the hero of the Skill Challenges.

You can also spend feats to use weapons as implements, get a Frost weapon, use it as an implement, take Wintertouched and Lasting Frost to try to get that thing going, but I think Teh Intarwebs is convinced that this “Permafrost” combo is better than it truly is.

Instead, I have a different plan. First, we overcome the poor implement choices of the Vampire by multiclassing into Sorcerer with either Soul of Sorcery (sorcerer implements and a Resist 5 of your choice, but you need Str 13) or Arcane Prodigy (sorcerer implements, Arcana training, and a oddly-placed encounter power that adds +2 to your next damage roll). I think Resist 5 is probably the better choice – both are good, but neither seems outstanding to me.

At any rate, once this feat is under your belt, you can use a staff implement. Next, you take Staff Expertise (+1/+2/+3 to attack with the staff, and your ranged and area attacks don’t provoke opportunity attacks). Now the relative lack of mobility for the Vampire is not as big of an issue – Vampires have a Ranged 5 at-will attack (that has +2 to hit built in) which doesn’t provoke and pulls the target toward you.

And now you have access to one of the best (especially for the price) magic items in the game – the Staff of Ruin. The Staff of Ruin has a d10 critical and adds its enhancement bonus as an item bonus to damage rolls (meaning it effectively adds its enhancement bonus twice to damage rolls). It doesn’t have a power, but most item powers are disappointing anyway – I’d much rather have a strong Property on the item so it’s always doing something for me. Now, the Staff of Ruin is a nuclear weapon in the hands of a Sorcerer or Wizard with their bursts and blasts (adding that extra damage over and over on multiple targets), but it still cuts hard in the hands of a Vampire.

If you go the staff route, you still have 5 feats left over to pick up those utility or defensive feats, or grab more multiclass feats and pick up Sorcerer powers (which you can use in melee without worrying, thanks to Staff Expertise). I highly recommend Superior Implement Training for the Accurate Staff, which grants a +1 untyped bonus to all attacks made with it.

I wish I could tell you that, instead, you can multiclass as a monk and really get some nice movement feats and such… but although monks have staff as an implement, multiclass monks only get ki focuses. I know – it makes me sad, too.

You have other staff-using classes to multiclass into, but most of them aren’t going to achieve synergy with what you’ve got as a Vampire (and you’re going to have to invest in an Ability Score that isn’t Dexterity or Charisma). Do you want to change into a wolf for style (but be unable to use your Vampire powers)? Then multiclass as a druid. As an Artificer, you get a healing power once per day (which probably makes it the best second choice). Invoker can get you Ritual Casting, so it’s not bad if you were going to take Ritual Casting anyway (but one wonders why a Vampire would be the party’s Ritual Caster). Sorry folks, Sorcerer is pretty much the only good choice if you want to be the staff vampire.

But this sort of crazy course to staff implements isn’t necessary, it’s just an option I like. A vampire is already an effective Striker, despite the hatred of the internet theorists. It’s also a fun class to play, and (like the other Essentials classes) great for new players.

The Vampire has three at-will attack powers – one that grants temporary hit points (making the Vampire even more resilient), one that deals 1d10 damage (and pushes, and counts as a basic melee attack), and one that is Ranged 5 (with a +2 to hit and a pull). Each of the three attacks targets a different Non-AC Defense, making the Vampire very difficult to match in targeting the weakest defenses of their opponents. The Vampire’s encounter power, Blood Drinker, adds damage after hitting with one of the two melee at-will attacks (which is a little limiting, but not very) and gives a healing surge as you sup on the precious life juices of your enemy, despite the fact that it’s a skeleton or a gelatinous cube.

Of course, I’m not calling the President to tell him about the Vampire’s other encounter and daily attack powers. The fact that you don’t get a choice and that they’re not mind-blowing means you’re left with a bit of an empty feeling when they appear on your sheet… but they still aren’t bad, don’t get me wrong. This really comes down to a psychological phenomenon, I think – people are happy when they have the perception of control. Vampire takes away the perception of control, so when you look over at the wizard who got to pick all his powers, you might feel a little sad.

Add that to another psychological phenomenon – the feeling of helplessness when faced with too many choices. When you realize there are dozens of feats you could take as a Vampire, you might feel that one, too. Other classes are going to look at their class feats first, and find there are feats ready-made for them to pick up. A Vampire player is going to have their eyes glaze over when they flip through all the generic feats and don’t see anything specially made for them.

The folks at Wizards who designed the Vampire class probably didn’t understand these two psychological phenomena, so the Vampire class ends up double-dipping on things that make you feel bad – too many choices in one place and no control in another place. That doesn’t make Vampire a bad class, it just means the class is going to have bad PR.

For me, my 11th level Drow Vampire (I know, I put darkness in my shadow so I could dark elf while I vampired) is both fun and effective. Of course, the drow racial powers help me get combat advantage (which means bonus damage for me), and drow have the perfect ability bonuses for the Vampire class. So far, it’s fun, and I haven’t even gotten to respec to my Staff of Ruin concept yet. I don’t fall too far behind the warlock in damage-dealing, I get around the field and I don’t need attention from the healers (of which we have two). I can do a little bit of control with pulling and pushing powers and a daily attack that dominates the target. Plus, I hit often (because I had lots of room for a superior implement feat), and against a very defensive enemy, my Dark Beckoning (+18 versus Will) is bound to break through.

And thusly, internet haters, do I defend the Vampire class and it’s lack of an optimization scheme for maximized damage. It’s not a pure damage class, and it’s biggest flaw may be that it has no niche at all. But it still offers a variety of customization through feats and considerable utility (for a Striker) with its wide range of attacks and effects, including a rare domination effect and a flight speed (as a bat) as an encounter power (albeit not a very good power, but it’s still a flight speed).

Plus, drinking the blood of your foes while talking in a bad European accent – who doesn’t love that?

The Magic Set Editor is software aimed originally at creating custom cards for the Magic: The Gathering card game. The site also has templates for Yu-Gi-Oh!, VS, L5R, Innovation, and many other games. Another fellow, “Ander00″, created a nice template for 4e features and powers (check out the thread on enworld.org).

But, even without downloading and installing the Anders set, the MSE can do some great things for you. I had used the Anders template before the Character Builder duplicated its functionality, but until recently, I hadn’t thought of what else the MSE could do for me.

One thing I always feel is lacking in most D&D games (and which leads to players being more easily distracted) is the lack of visual stimulus. While players might have an idea of what their own character looks like, in their mind’s eye, the other characters in the party don’t have faces, and are probably just tied to the player who plays them.

But it doesn’t stop with what other PCs look like. You’re swinging around that +6 holy avenger, an artifact in its own right – what does it look like? What style is your armor? What physical qualities does that key NPC have? Certainly, D&D is a game centered on imagination, but grown-ups have to work all day and take care of adult stuff  - by the time we get to the D&D table, we’re a little too tired to play pretend sometimes.

Well, MSE can’t fix all your problems, but it can certainly provide you with some visual stimulus. Let’s start where I started – key NPC cards! For those recurring NPCs – good or evil – it’s not a bad idea at all to give the players a visual reference. And, instead of turning your laptop around to show them the picture every time, why not make a little “Magic” card of the NPC?

Now This Gets Image-Heavy…

When you’re in MSE, making new cards, you can set the “style” of the card. With the Magic card template, there are tons of styles with little-to-no text boxes, leaving more room for the image! Here’s an NPC from my Dark Sun game:

I used the existing boxes on the card template to give her name, “class” and affiliation, but obviously, there are a lot of potential uses. PCs obviously follow the same basic format. Here’s a PC from my Dark Sun game:

So, NPCs and PCs are fairly obvious. What about bringing some spice to a magic item? In Dark Sun, a world where the PCs are bound to be scrounging up whatever they can, I think it’s a good idea to highlight the magic items with cards. Here’s the first magic item that the party received:

The item is just a Cloak of Resistance with a cool name. (Note: Cloak art is hard to find. Most people don’t paint fancy fantasy pictures of someone with their back to you.) The powers and Enhancements of the item all fit on the card nicely. Now the player has a nice visual reference to go with the special item he received. I have another item card which fits into another idea I have for my Dark Sun game:

This isn’t an item I’ll use for my game because no PC uses swords, but it’s a style I’m interested in. The Obsidian Bloodblade is a sort of “semi-magical” item. This is more of a teaser for yet another article I want to write, possibly titled, “Making Legendary Magic Items” or something. This article is about the Magic Set Editor, so let’s get back to that.

So, we’ve seen PCs, NPCs, and magic items. What else can the Magic Set Editor be used for?

We’ve all played World of Warcraft or something like it – I think an explicit quest mechanic is lacking from D&D. Again, I should write a separate article about this, and I will. But here’s another fun idea from the “Quest” concept:

The card concept is actually perfect for temporary things, like potions, sun rods, or even action points… especially when you have players who always forget that they have these things!

Even without the Anders template (or if you find the Anders template too plain), the default MSE can make power cards:

It may be more visually appealing, but as a warning, this won’t work very well for some of those really long-winded powers.

I also have the vaguest of ideas on how to use the MSE to make cards that will make skill challenges a bit more interesting, but that idea is very vague, and probably requires its own post.

Naturally, the MSE could be used to make cards for other games, including board games. It could be used to make your own custom card game, if you were keen on making one. It’s a really handy tool for making custom cards for any occasion, except probably birthdays, weddings, etc.

Where Do I Get Art?

Good question. Quality art is the centerpiece of this idea, since the whole point is really to make D&D more visually appealing and concrete for the players.

If you’re a D&D Insider subscriber, you can browse art galleries galore on their site. This is handy because the art is of very similar styles, so there’s not too much jarring difference from one piece to the next. Not a D&D Insider? There’s still a lot of art available for free on the D&D site, although it’s a bit older. I suggest checking out Gatherer as well – it’s an index of all Magic cards, ever. The art is small-ish, but printable.

There are also piles of artists on the internet throwing art out there that you can easily pilfer (I’m not a lawyer, but I think it’s Fair Use). Google Images is your friend.

A Few More Tidbits…

The MSE is pretty easy and intuitive… for me, at least. It takes care of a lot of stuff for you, from resizing text automatically to having a dialog box for cropping images to fit. It’s also got a nice printing interface, with the ability to print out many cards per sheet to save paper. If you were so inclined, you could print directly onto cardstock.

Once you print and cut, it’s easy to stick the cards into card sleeves from your local gaming store. Or, if you have a pile of actual Magic cards, we all know you can glue the printed cards right over those extra Islands – they don’t make Fireballs or Lightning Bolts, so who cares about Islands?

Within an hour or so, you can have a pretty nice handful of cards for use in your game, however you decide to employ them. With enough fussing, you can even customize or modify templates to get exactly what you need out of them.

For the price ($0), you just can’t beat the Magic Set Editor.

So, in the Light of a Dark Sun campaign, the characters have been introduced to the idea of a divine god existing and wishing to heal the world. All the characters are members of the Veiled Alliance, so they’ve heard stories of Dark Sun’s green past. But not all the characters are convinced this goddess, Anyanna, is real (and rightfully so). One of them, however, is a devout follower.

After the only priestess of Anyanna cured them of a zombie disease, the player characters gained access to a power called “The Blessing of Anyanna.” They can only use this power if they are Good-aligned and their character has faith in Anyanna, which (as of last game) only one of them claims. Here’s the power card for Blessing of Anyanna:

I know what you’re saying – “A deck of cards? How gimmicky.” Or maybe you’re not saying that. But most of my players are folks who love card and board games, so I think it fits their pre-existing interests.

The deck of cards also gives me a chance to add some more flavor and visual appeal to the game. I whipped out the “Magic Set Editor” software (which I’ll explore in yet another post) and slapped together some cards for the Blessing of Anyanna deck. I’m super-pleased with them:

“Hey Chuck, those look like Magic cards!” That’s what the Magic Set Editor is actually used for – making custom magic cards. Obviously, it’s easily used for other purposes, like these “Blessing of Anyanna” cards. And with a template added into the Magic Set Editor, I made the power card early in the post. The art all comes from D&D Insider’s Art Galleries – I figure that they gave me access to all this art for a reason (to make cool cards for D&D, right?) and hey, I’m paying for it.

Now, normally I am a highly customized kind of guy, but in this case I used the Magic card template for these cards to show what you can do without getting into the nuts and bolts of the software to make customized templates. As promised, I’ll dig into the potential of the Magic Set Editor in a separate post.

Back to the Blessing itself – you can see that these cards might seem varied in power or usefulness. Since the item gives a semi-random result, I tried to give it fairly powerful effects. Of course, it may require some tuning, and it’s easy to go back into the MSE and change the text, print out new cards, and tweak to my heart’s content.

The real purpose of the Blessing is to give players the ability to decide if and when their character ultimately chooses to believe in this goddess Anyanna. The trigger of the power means that the unbelieving character has a chance to call upon Anyanna when his or her need is greatest. The alignment restriction gives the Unaligned warlock in the party (Titus) a reason to reconsider his morality.

But, ultimately, even if the characters never convert, I didn’t make the offer so tempting as to be irresistible. I don’t want to simply force the players into a corner – “Convert or lose out on loot!” That would be a terrible precedent. Instead, I hope to simply give the characters a chance to make a commitment and receive a minor reward.

By throwing in some interesting mechanics alongside things that are essentially roleplaying decisions, I give the players a good reason to think about their characters’ beliefs and personalities. In the future, I hope to throw a lot more things like this at them – choices that are essentially roleplay decisions, but result in bonuses or penalties appropriate to the choice and the situation. This also won’t be the last time they’re offered power in exchange for loyalty…

As a side note, I really like the “Boons” added to 4th edition in later supplements. These are magic item effects that aren’t based on items, making them perfect for games in which the player characters aren’t going to be bristling with shiny, glowing armor and weapons.

Enter the “Convocation”. A “Convocation” is like a Boon, but it’s meant for the whole group to share in. This could be as easy as giving all the PCs access to a specific magic item’s Property or Power… or it could be as complex as the “Blessing of Anyanna” that I’ll describe below. My basic theory is that the character can use the Convocation as if it were a magic item, using a Property or Power from that Convocation. (Note to those who don’t read the D&D 4e rules updates – the whole concept of “daily magic item uses” has been removed, so this is a lot simpler than before.)

What’s the point of a Convocation? Basically, it serves as the kind of reward a group might get as a whole instead of as an individual reward. If they save the wizard Gamblagog from the clutches of the ice dragon Wienzerberber, then Gamblagog might cast an enchantment to give the whole party the Property of Veteran’s Armor (which is useful for most classes). In that case, it’s not much different from handing out the same Boon to each character.

Now Let’s Spice It Up a Bit…

A Convocation can get a lot more interesting than that, though. If the Convocation has “charges”, then using it becomes a resource drain on the party. If the Convocation gets weaker or stronger the more it’s used, then strategy enters the calculation. Perhaps the Convocation changes completely after it’s used, or morphs through several permutations as it’s used. This adds a group dynamic that most other D&D mechanics don’t have.

Here Are Some Convocation Ideas…

Note that there is absolutely no playtesting in the following ideas. They are just the things that pop into my head.

So, this post is long enough already – thus, the aforementioned “Blessing of Anyanna” Convocation I’m using in my Dark Sun game will be stuck in its own post.

And after that, you might want to know how I made these power card things, which I’ll explain in yet another post!