Shadowrun is a terrible system with an awesome concept behind it, which is why at least once a month someone on r/rpg asks what the best non-Shadowrun system is for playing Shadowrun. The most common answer– and the correct one in my opinion– is Stars Without Number.
Now SWN has psionics rules, and the deluxe version also has some "space magic" rules, but neither quite work like Shadowrun magic does. To summarize:
In Shadowrun, spells are level-less, so any mage can potentially cast any spell (supplements add some special exceptions because it's Shadowrun, of course they do). When casting a spell you pick the force– the power you'l cast it at– resolve the effects, and then roll for "drain", which means you might take either stun or physical damage from your own spell. The higher the force, the stronger the spell and the more drain you'll take.
It's not Vancian at all, and nothing I've seen in the OSR quite works that way. Here's a Shadowrun magic hack that comes really close.
Pick an OSR game of your choice to play "Shadowrun" with. As mentioned, SWN is probably the best choice, but Esoteric Enterprises would work too, as would a few others. It needs to be a game with a magic system though.
Spells can be leveled as in most systems or level-less; this works either way. You learn spells as normal; this just changes how you cast them.
Step One
Pick a spell to cast. Unlike in normal OSR systems, you can cast spells up to twice the spell level you'd normally be able to cast, so like a first-level wizard could cast level 2 spells, etc. If using level-less spells, imagine you learn a new spell level every other character level like in most systems.
There will of course be a cost to casting spells above your normal casting level. You'll see...
Step Two
Resolve the spell's immediate effects as normal. Drain comes after the spell is cast.
Step 3
Now comes the price: drain, in the form of temporary wisdom or constitution damage.
Make a save versus magic, or a wisdom save, or in Stars Without Number, a mental save.
Now take drain. In the five spell level system of Stars Without Number, this is d4 for a level 1 spell, d6 for a level 2 spell, and d8, 10, d12, so on. In the nine spell level system used by most games, drain is 1/d2/d3/d4/d5/d6/d8/d10/d12.
If the spell was a level you'd normally be able to cast– so its level was no higher than half your character level rounded up– drain causes temporary wisdom damage. If higher, it causes constitution damage. If you passed the save, the drain is halved, rounded down.
Temporary WIS and CON damage lowers your modifiers as normal, potentially reducing your hit points, perception, saves vs magic, or whatever those ability scores do in your system.
If CON goes to zero, you're dead. If WIS goes to zero, you're just knocked unconscious.
So as you go up in level, you can a) cast higher-level spells, b) cast higher-level spells safely, and c) pas the save more often, thus taking less drain.
The number of spells you can cast per day (or per week since the ability damage does take time to heal) still doesn't scale as well as spellcasting ability does in most OSR games. This works best if you can increase WIS, and maybe also CON, as you level up. If your game of choice doesn't allow that, maybe make it so drain is completely avoided if you either pass the save by ten or more, or roll a nat 1 or 20 (whichever is good obviously) on it.
Ghosts are normally incorporeal and usually dealt with by exorcising them rather than reducing their hit points, but there are a few cases where you can combat them directly. HD may also be relevant to XP value or some ghostly powers.
Who were they in life? Roll d12 plus randomly determine gender.
1– A child whose parents had long ago fallen out of love.
2– A prominent local businessperson.
3– The widow(er) of a great warrior or adventurer.
4– A wealthy socialite.
5– A disgraced government official.
6– A reclusive and mysterious person. Little was known for sure about them, but they were widely viewed as a weirdo.
7– A person with a singular obsession, such as music or alchemy.
8– A cultist or sorcerer who dabbled in dark things.
9– A political dissident or social outcast.
10– A precocious and adventurous child who inadvertently learned a dark secret.
11– An innocent who got mixed up in something they shouldn't have.
12– A really boring person, actually.
How did they die? Roll a d10
1– Murdered by a rival.
2– Torn apart by an angry mob.
3– Killed by a close family member.
4– A mysterious fire.
5– Fell suddenly ill. May have been poisoned.
6– A tragic accident. At least it was probably an accident.
7– A ritual or science experiment gone wrong.
8– Suicide
9– Re-roll on this table with a d8, but their manner of death actually has nothing to do with why they became a ghost.
10– Re-roll on this table with two d8's. The first is how they appear to have died. The second is how they actually died.
What location is the ghost haunting? Roll d20
1– A mansion in the city or suburbs. 50% chance they also haunt the grounds of the estate.
2– A country manor. 50% chance they also haunt the grounds of the estate.
3– A large apartment building. It's inhabited; getting at the ghost may require getting into people's apartments.
4– A graveyard.
5– An abandoned village.
6– A room or group of rooms in a dungeon, which the players have to travel through.
7– An entire hex on the regional map.
8– An entire neighborhood.
9– A library.
10– A temple or church. The priests are quite embarrassed about their inability to exorcise it.
11– A modest farmhouse.
12– A castle or fortress.
13– The palace or local seat of government.
14– A prison.
15– A creepy ruined tower.
16– An inn. Still in business, but won't be for long if the ghost isn't dealt with.
17– A laboratory, or house with a lab in it.
18– A museum, zoo, or other place where people go to look at things.
19– An opera, playhouse or other place of entertainment.
20– A random location with no immediately obvious connection to the ghost.
What powers does the ghost have? Roll 2d12, plus an extra d12 for every five full HD. Don't re-roll if a single power is rolled twice, but do re-roll if it's rolled three times. A ghost can manifest its powers once per turn, or once per round if materialized or possessing someone.
1– Psychokinesis. Can fling small objects around the room. If rolled twice, can fling people, or create a small whirlwind of small objects.
2– Illusion. Can create totally convincing mental illusions that affect one person at a time. If rolled twice, can affect any number of people.
3– Mental domination. As charm person. If rolled twice, can be used as suggestion instead.
4– Possession. Save vs magic, or willpower save, to resist. Can possess for up to one turn, and it's super obvious the person is possessed. If rolled twice, can possess for up to an hour, and produces no obvious physical sign of possession.
5– Materialization. Takes a round to materialize, fights as if it has half as many HD as it has, and does one attack per round doing d8 damage. If rolled twice, fights with full HD and gets two attacks.
6– Controls undead. Can control up to four 1 HD zombies or skeletons at a time, has 2d10 total, and regenerates one per day if they're destroyed. If rolled twice, the zombies or skeletons have 2 HD each.
7– Terror and madness. Affects one target. Save vs magic, or wisdom save, to resist. On a failed save, lose d6 wisdom. If this reduces wisdom by more than half the character panics and runs away screaming. If it takes them to 0 wisdom, they're catatonic.
8– Cold. Can chill a room to the point where people are in danger of exposure if they don't take steps to warm up, but take no immediate damage. If rolled twice, can chill the whole haunted area this way, or rapidly freeze one room or room-sized area, doing d8 cold damage to everyone in it. This takes about ten seconds, giving people time to get out of the room if they react fast enough.
9– Wind. Can cause winds strong enough to knock people over if they're off balance. If rolled twice, can cause minor storms and gusts of wind strong enough to knock people ten feet even if their feet are planted solidly.
10– Electricity. Can charge metal objects with electricity, which discharges when someone touches them. Charged objects hum slightly. If rolled twice, can affect an entire room full of objects.
If a ghost takes damage while materialized or possessing, that damage is inflicted on the ghost, not just its physical body. However if reduced to zero hp by something that can't normally harm ghosts, it's just knocked into a coma and takes a few hours to heal, rather than being killed.
How to exorcise it Roll two or three d12's, re-rolling duplicates. Each ghost has two or three ways you can get rid of it.
1– Avenge its death.
2– Give its body a proper burial.
3– Just destroy the entire place.
4– Have its body properly baptized.
5– Conduct an obscure ritual that requires several objects that were important to the person in life.
6– Find a powerful magic artifact, located nearby.
7– Make sure its family is taken care of, or complete whatever mission it was obsessed with in life.
8– Conduct an exorcism with the aid of the ghost's nearest blood relative or former lover.
9– Sacrifice something very important to appease the ghost.
10– Destroy or cleanse a cursed item linked to the ghost.
11– Recover something lost, or rebuild something destroyed, when the person died.
12– Figure out the ghost's motivation, then convince it that staying around is actually doing more harm than good.
How to learn all of this Roll two to four d12's. You'll probably want to re-roll duplicates but in some cases you may not need to– there could be more than
1– A close relative.
2– A former employee or employer.
3– A neighbor.
4– The local library or hall of records.
5– The local storyteller, wise woman or gossip.
6– A priest who previously tried and failed to exorcise the ghost.
7– A book hidden in the haunted area.
8– The ghost itself drops hints by screaming at you, writing on mirrors, etc.
9– An old enemy or rival.
10– An illicit lover or little-known friend.
11– An officer of the law who investigated the death when it occurred.
12– A creepy witch, medium or fortune-teller.
In addition, there should be some vague hints lying around the haunted area, and tavern rumors should point players to where they can find answers, if not offer clear answers in and of themselves.
These chase rules are meant to be used with these post-apocalyptic vehicle rules, although they could be adapted to other vehicle rules pretty easily.
They're also meant to be used for foot chases, so they can be used to create awesome parkour chase scenes.
Moreover, they can be used for combined vehicle and foot chases, like if someone on foot is being chased by someone in a car. Obviously there's an issue there in that vehicles are just plain faster than runners– I'll explain how to deal with that later.
Initiative is side initiative for people on foot, and by vehicle for people in vehicles.
Roll d20 (or 2d10 or whatever your chore mechanic is) plus DEX mod plus maybe a relevant driving mod for each driver. That is their vehicle's initiative, and everyone in the vehicle goes on that initiative score, including not only passengers but also prisoners or boarders from the other side.
For each side, do the same thing but have whichever character is the most dextrous, best at parkour or whatever, roll for their whole side. If there's a skill system they can add their athletics skill or whatever is most likely to get used, the same way drivers can add their driving skill.
Break ties by who has the highest skill, highest modifier, or just by rolling dice.
Chase Positions and Range Bands
At the the start of the chase, figure out who is in the lead, who's being chased by everyone else– they're at range zero. Anyone within like 30 feet or less, or the range of a taser or thrown rock or dagger, is also at range zero.
Anyone within a hundred feet or so, or easy pistol range, is at range one– they're one range band behind the lead.
Anyone within around 500 feet, so fairly easy rifle range or extreme pistol range, is at range two.
Anyone within less than a couple thousand feet, so sniper rifle, heavy machine gun or anti-tank rocket range or extreme rifle range, is at range three.
Anyone within about a mile, or extreme range for sniper rifles and heavy weapons, is at range four.
Anyone within about 3 miles is at range five. At this range you're still visible assuming no obstructions, but you're out of range of any weapon short of tank cannons or guided missiles.
Anyone at 3-9 miles away is at range six. At this range you might not be visible even with few or no obstructions, you might be over the horizon, but anyone chasing you has at least a rough idea of where you are. Also you might be leaving a visible dust cloud even if not visible yourself. People at this range can keep chasing you but at the referee's discretion might have to make a tracking test or something to make sure they go the right way.
Anyone more than ten miles away is at range seven– they've lost track of the person in the lead. If someone else is at range six, maybe they could follow that person and hope for the best.
I wrote those ranges mainly with post-apocalyptic car chases in mind; for pure foot chases in a crowded urban environment, keep the same system but maybe re-interpret the range bands as being shorter.
Obviously the logarithmic scaling of these range bands means time is somewhat abstracted; a combat round in a chase represents a rather indeterminate, abstracted amount of time. If that becomes an issue for spell durations or bard car songs or something, treat each round as being ten seconds if people are at close range, and a minute if the closest chases is out of weapons range. Or something like that.
Actions During Combat
On their initiative each round, each character takes a movement action, and might also take a non-movement action. Note that if you're driving or on foot, you have to take a movement action. Even staying still is an "action" in the sense that it causes you to fall behind and affects your position relative to everyone else. Only passengers get to not take movement actions.
Here are the options people have– or at least the ones that need to be codified for this system.
Chase Actions
I'll explain DC's for chase and other movement actions at the end of this section.
Chase actions can cause you to gain or lose a range band. If you're not at position zero, this means you get closer or further to position zero. If you are at position zero and you can a range band, you stay at position zero and everyone else falls a range behind. If you're at position zero and you fall back a range, you fall to position one if someone else was at position zero with you, or everyone else gains a range if nobody else was at range zero.
Note that things like ramming and other maneuvers are not considered chase actions, since they don't change your chase position.
Hold Pace– This is the equivalent of running but not sprinting, or driving fast but not pedal to the floor. If you do this, you can also take a non-chase action, but it's at disadvantage unless it's something that directly involves movement like ramming, maneuvering, etc.
Make a driving or athletics check. On a success you stay in your current range band, on a critical success you either move up a range, or can give one passenger advantage on a non-movement action this round, or ignore your own disadvantage, your choice. On a failure you fall back one range, on a critical failure, save or crash.
Push It– Sprint or put the pedal to the metal to try and gain range. Make a driving or athletics test. On a success you gain a range band, on a critical success you can gain two if you want. On a failure you simply don't gain a range band, on a critical failure, save or crash.
You can't take any non-chase actions if you pick this, other than ramming, dive tackling someone, etc.
Slow Down or Stop– You deliberately fall back. This doesn't usually require a test at all, but it might if you're in a vehicle, want to stop altogether and were pushing it last round, or if the terrain makes it especially difficult, like you're on ice.
You can take a non-chase action without disadvantage this turn.
DC's for Chase Actions and Movement Actions
For any chase action or any non-chase action involving movement like ramming, the DC is determined by terrain. Drivers will make tests using either their vehicle's speed or handling modifier.
Runners will usually use dexterity, but very occasionally might use strength.
Encumbered runners, or heavily encumbered runners (whatever the equivalent of having a heavy backpack that would significantly slow you down is called in your system) get disadvantage on all chase actions and other movement actions. Being encumbered in a chase is really, really bad.
Runners from a race that has a lower movement speed, like dwarves, get disadvantage on tests related to raw speed, but not tests relating to agility. If you have higher than normal speed, you get advantage instead.
For mostly open terrain, the DC is 10 for speed and you can't rely on handling/agility.
For somewhat cluttered terrain, it's 15 either way.
For very dense terrain, it's 10 for handling/agility and you can't make speed tests; you have to use agility.
If it seems weird that dense terrain actually makes handling tests easier, remember that what's being measured is not your absolute speed, but your speed relative to everyone else.
If you're in the lead, you're free to choose which way you want to go, and the people chasing you largely have to follow you. If you're following, you need to either follow the path of whoever you're chasing, find a shortcut, or potentially take a long way around to cut them off if you're in a car and they're on foot.
Finally, a word about speed differences. Cars with high speed are faster than cars with low speed, and high-dex people are faster than low-dex people. Not by enough to automatically outrun each other though; just, they are likely to win contests, but they still have to roll.
Cars vs people, or planes vs cars for that matter, are a different story. Cars automatically succeed on speed tests vs people, and people automatically fail them vs cars, ditto for cars vs most aircraft. If you're on foot running from a vehicle, you pretty much have no choice but to go into dense terrain where the chase actions will have to be handling/agility based; you can't win on raw speed.
Non-Chase Actions
Attack– This works pretty much as normal, with two considerations. First, you may get disadvantage on an attack if you're at long range, or if the target is moving across your field of vision, fishtailing wildly, etc. Second, people in cars are likely to get some kind of cover bonus to AC.
Use an item, cast a spell, etc– Again, this works pretty much as normal. People might need to make a DEX check to do it while running or in a bumpy car though.
Full Defense– Usable by drivers or people on foot only, you take some evasive maneuvers. Make a driving or athletics test; on a success, attacks against you have disadvantage until your next turn, but so do attacks by any of your passengers if you're driving. Doesn't apply to attacks from the same range band, or to ramming attempts.
Ram, or dive tackle someone– Make a driving, athletics or grappling test against the target's unarmored AC. You have disadvantage if you weren't in their range band at the start of your turn, i.e. if you sped up to catch them then tried to ram. However this doesn't stack with the disadvantage from your chase action, and you can try to do this even if you pushed it.
A successful dive tackle during a chase does d4 damage on soft ground, or d6 on hard ground, and then you're on the ground grappling.
A successful ram does damage to both vehicles. Each vehicle inflicts one die per size, so one die for motorcycles, two for cars, three for large vans, etc. The die size is d4 if the vehicle's velocities are nearly matched, like you side-swipe or bump someone front to back, and d6 if you come in more from the side. If two vehicles collide head-on, they both inflict d8, and if you t-bone someone, you inflict d10's and they inflict d6's.
Armor modifies damage. Reduce damage taken by one for every point of armor. Increase damage inflicted by one for every two points of armor.
It is imperative that you do armor this way, even if it otherwise acts as hit avoidance in your system. Treating armor as hit avoidance would imply that, say, a motorcycle ramming a tank is unlikely to damage either the tank or itself.
If a car rams a person, treat this as if the person was a size 1 vehicle. Their armor counts as half– personal armor isn't as substantial as vehicle armor– and only hard armor, like metal not leather, adds to damage inflicted.
Jump onto a vehicle, off a vehicle, or from one vehicle to another– Oh hell yes, you can totally do this, provided you and the vehicle you want to jump to are in the same range band.
The DC is 10 if the two vehicles are less than 5 feet apart, 5 if they're locked together somehow, 15 if they're 5-10 feet apart, and 20 if they're 10-20 feet apart. Disadvantage if what you're jumping from and what you're jumping to haven't roughly matched their velocities, including if tiehr vehicle's driver is doing full defense.
Vehicles are always moving of course, so base this on the most opportune moment you think someone would get within that particular round.
If you succeed you make it on or off the target vehicle, and you now act on that vehicle's initiative count, or on your side's "on foot" initiative count if you jumped to the ground. Anyone onboard an enemy-driven vehicle acts just before that vehicle's initiative count, so if you board an enemy vehicle you get the chance to stab someone before they react, unless someone uses a held action or something to hit you as you jump.
If you critically succeed you land so softly people don't feel/hear you land on the vehicle, though they might still see you. If you fail you fall, take damage, and lose your next turn; save for half damage and to not lose your next turn. If you critically fail, you don't get to save.
Note that while this potentially allows someone to game the initiative system by jumping back and forth, they risk falling every time they do so. If this isn't enough to discourage people from jumping around constantly, your NPC's aren't maneuvering enough.
Any other action people can think of– Rule as necessary. This includes stuff like combat maneuvers to push people out of a vehicle, or called shots to take out a car's tires.
Chase Procedure
The referee will need a notebook and pen or pencil, or maybe some post-it notes. Each round the referee will tell people what the terrain is like where they're located, giving them an idea what their options are. i.e. you can speed along the road or try to veer off into the field, you can run down the alley, try to jump a fence, or climb a fire escape, etc.
The referee will need to keep track of what terrain people have moved through in past rounds, since anyone chasing them and following their route will have the same options. In essence, the referee only has to come up with new terrain when the person in the lead advances.
If people start taking different routes but still chasing the same person, treat them as being laterally separated by one range band. i.e. if Mad Max is being chased by two bandit cars, and one car stays on the road Max is on while the other cuts through a canyon, the two bandit cars are one range band apart left-right in addition to any front-back distance.
If people start veering off in different directions, you've essentially got two or more separate chases at that point.
Chases are over when one side gives up, gets killed, or the range distance between the people running away and the people chasing is seven or more. Or if the people running find some clever way to hide other than sheer distance. If the people running stop running, then you're into a standard combat.
Blade Runner was my favorite movie as a kid and because of it, Rutger Hauer is one of my favorite actors ever. Ladyhawke sounded like a cool movie so I watched it a few weeks ago.
It actually isn't that good, but the concept is cool. Side note: I wish studios would remake movies that had a great concept but were poorly executed, rather than movies that nailed it the first time. A pair of lovers are cursed so that every day, the woman turns into a hawk, and every night, the man turns into a wolf. Also, while in animal form each of them has animal-level intelligence so they can't understand what their human-form partner is saying beyond simple things like "stay."
So, here's a Ladyhawke class where you play as both characters. Effectively, at any given time you're playing as one of them with the other being like an animal companion.
First, roll ability scores like normal, then pick the ladyhawke class. Then roll ability scores a second time. These are your two characters.
Assign them each a class– either fighter or thief. No spellcasters here. Each of them will have the saves and abilities of their assigned class.
The two of them share XP, and level as an elf. If you're using a system where all classes advance at the same rate, they level as if they're one level higher.
Now pick an animal form for each of them– anything at least as big as a cat and no bigger than a bear, and it has to be a mundane animal. The animal form also has whatever abilities it would usually have like night vision or flight.
Also decide which one is human during the day and which one is human at night. They both shapeshift, in opposite directions, at sunrise and sunset, at the same moment. There's always a brief second or so where they're both in human form; not long enough to communicate, but long enough to share a look of pained longing for each other. It looks really sappy.
In human form, each character has the normal hit points for their class. In animal form, it depends on the animal's size.
If it's a roughly human-sized animal like a wolf, it's the same number of hit points. If it's bigger like a bear, you get an extra hit point per level when you change into that form, and lose them when you change back. If it's a smaller form like a hawk, the reverse happens– you lose hit a hit point per level when you change into that form, then regain them when you change back to human.
These extra hit points are lost first if you're wounded, much like temporary HP in later editions of D&D. Shapechanging to a weaker form when you're wounded can't kill you.
You need to sleep six hours a day, but you can be more flexible than most people about sleep schedules. You can split that into two shorter blocks of sleep for each character, you can have them sleep one at a time while the other keeps watch, etc. They each get the benefit of a night's rest whenever they complete their six hours of sleep in one day, and if they don't get that much they'll suffer from sleep deprivation as normal.
Each character needs to eat as much as the average of their human and animal form, regardless of which form they're in when they do their eating. There's a cost to being able to turn into a bear.
While in animal form, each character has the intelligence of a well-trained dog. They can recognize friends like the other party members, they can obey simple commands like stay, eat, attack, but they don't understand human languages, not really. They don't have to check morale because they're perfectly loyal to each other; you can control your animal person as long as you role-play the lack of human-level intelligence properly.
If either of them dies, the other one is soon to be out of the game, life just isn't worth living once your soulmate is dead. They'll either go insane or sink into an uncurable depression or jump off a bridge or just go berserk. You can keep playing them for the remainder of that day in order to go out in a blaze of glory, but after that it's time to roll up a new character.
So I published this and then realized I never said anything about actually lifting the curse. Shit. Uhhh...let's say the referee secretly defines how to do that, and you start with some idea of who cursed you and where and how you can learn how to lift the curse. If you figure that out and do it, the curse is lifted and you pick one character to be your character from then on, and the other to be their retainer. From then on they each level separately as their respective class. Also they each gain a level for doing that.
I've been trying to figure out how to do this for ages, and I think I've figured out a system that works alright, at least. Not playtested yet.
This is meant for modern and futuristic games, but could work for games set in the past as long as the characters are embedded in society. Like, they have jobs and money in the bank, they're not hobos whose wealth is all carried. For futuristic games consider using this with reputation network rules.
Treat wealth, mechanically, as working like an ability score. It has a raw value from zero to twenty (or thirty if your system allows that) and a modifier calculated like any other ability score modifier. It represents a combination of savings, non-adventuring income from whatever your day job is, and social class.
A wealth score of 10 roughly represents the average American, so monthly income of around five thousand dollars, net worth of around a hundred thousand.
However, because it combines income and savings, a person with a decent wealth score could theoretically have negative net worth combined with a good income, maybe. That happens with abstracted systems.
Generate a starting wealth score at character creation. If you want players to start out poor like in most games, they start with something like d4 wealth plus a few items. If you're fine with them starting out rich– and presumably getting rich isn't the object of the game– you can roll 3d6 like every other ability score. Or any other method. Up to you.
Wealth score goes down (usually temporarily, sometimes permanently) when you buy stuff, and up if you acquire enough money to raise it. It takes damage just like your ability scores can.
Super important note: You need to have guidelines for how many dollars wealth levels and purchases represent, and I provide them. That doesn't mean you should actually count dollar prices all the time, which defeats the whole point of an abstract wealth mechanic. Just view all of them as very approximate guidelines.
Making Purchases
Conceptually, there you can think of all purchases as falling into one of five categories.
Trivial purchases that will never be significant no matter how many you make. Putting a few bucks in the parking meter, buying a cheap fast food meal.
You can generally make as many of these as you want. If you abuse that, like by buying stiff for the whole group, these start to count as minor purchases instead.
Anything that costs up to (Wealth) dollars is trivial.
Minor purchases that you generally don't think twice about, but that would add up to being significant if you made them routinely. Eating at somewhat nicer restaurants, going to the movies, stuff like that.
A minor purchase here and there doesn't cost wealth. If you make (Wealth) minor purchases in quick succession– like within a week, or an adventuring session– your wealth score suffers one point of temporary damage.
Anything that is more than trivial and costs up to (Wealth squared) dollars is minor.
Significant purchases are things you can afford to pay cash for, but they're expensive enough that you do have to budget for them and make up for the cost by being frugal elsewhere. For middle-class people, electronics like phones, TVs, and laptops generally fall into this category, as do small vacations like a weekend ski trip within driving distance.
A significant purchase inflicts a point or more of temporary wealth damage.
Anything up to (Wealth cubed) dollars is significant and causes one point of temporary wealth damage.
Anything up to twice that much causes three points of temporary wealth damage, anything up to (wealth cubed times three) causes six points of temporary wealth damage, anything up to (wealth cubed times four) causes ten points of temporary wealth damage, and anything up to (wealth cubed times five) causes fifteen points of temporary wealth damage.
Temporary wealth damage means you've dipped into your savings, but not had to go into debt (or at least not serious long-term debt), nor sell of significant assets to finance your purchase. You just have to live frugally for a while to make up for your purchase. You can't make a purchase if the temporary wealth damage would take your wealth below zero.
Major purchases are things you can't afford to pay cash for. You either have to finance them with a loan, or sell off some investments to free up cash for them. Stuff like cars and homes usually fall into this category, as might a major vacation.
Major purchases permanently reduce your wealth score by a point.
Anything up to (Wealth to the fourth power, times five) dollars is a major purchase.
If you want to purchase something bigger than that, calculate how many dollars the next wealth level down is worth. Like if you're wealth 10, major purchase is 50k, but wealth nine is 32k, so dropping down from wealth 10 to wealth 8 would let you purchase something costing up to 82k.
Finally, there are things you just can't afford, period.
It's okay to be approximate with all of these numbers– the whole point of systems like this is to avoid having to actually count money. As long as you're not off by more than a factor of two, maybe three, this system works fine. If you're off by an order of magnitude then it breaks down.
Restoring Temporary Wealth Damage and Increasing Wealth
Temporary wealth damage "heals" at a rate of one point per month during downtime. During adventuring, you can heal it by acquiring cash equal to however much a significant purchase would be to you.
Increasing wealth is simply the reverse of making a major purchase. If you're at wealth 5, then buying your way up to wealth 6 will cost (6^4 x 5) dollars, or $6,480. Again, you can be very approximate with this and you don't need to make players count money. "A few thousand dollars" would be good enough in this example.
If you want your game to be a gritty realistic crime game like The Wire, then money has to be laundered before you can use it to buy up your permanent wealth score– but "dirty" money can still be used to restore temporary wealth damage.
But What About the Wealth Modifier?
The wealth modifier could get applied to rolls where your social class is important, like a test to get into some exclusive high-class club.
It would also apply when you're trying to use your money to accomplish something, but simply having money is necessary but not sufficient to succeed. Like if you want to systematically bribe a lot of people, it helps to have more money but it's still not guaranteed that you can find people to bribe or that they'll take a bribe.
Overall though, the modifier maybe won't get used much, but it's there if you need it.
But What About Billionaires?
If you've done the math then you've realized that even a wealth 20 individual has a net worth of only a few million dollars, and a wealth 30 individual has somewhere in the low tens of millions. There are two ways to portray higher wealth.
First, you could just let wealth get as high as it needs to, but stop increasing the modifier, or increase it more slowly, beyond a certain point.
Second, you could not use this system, and instead use a domain game mechanic to represent larger amounts of wealth. Beyond a certain point, a rich person's wealth is basically an organization unto itself. I prefer this method, and I'm working on a system for representing organizations that I'll share someday.
That said, this method is more than enough to get your party beyond the point where they'd either retire or move their focus to domain-level play.
Traditionally cities are usually places to rest and resupply between adventures, rather than places to have adventures. As someone who cut his teeth playing Shadowrun, I don't like this– I think the potential for cities to be adventure locations has been sorely under-appreciated.
The obvious adventure hooks for cities involve gangs, political intrigue, burglary, business espionage/sabotage, and other human-centric plots. But cities can have monsters too; you just have to think about what kinds of monsters could plausibly hide in a city.
1– Vampire
Stats as per the monster manual of your choice, but this has to be the human-looking kind of vampire. Has to feed either every night (not dangerous to victims), every other night (dangerous but probably not lethal for victims), or once a week (if completely draining victims of blood). Probably has a consistent M.O., like it almost always feeds on prostitutes, or drunkards, or muggers, or sailors. Will have 1d4 mind-controlled slaves to watch over it and do its errands during the day.
2– Ghost
Haunts a whole neighborhood, not a single house. Incorporeal and immune to normal weapons, and very tough overall because it can vanish into the ethereal if wounded. Getting rid of it requires either very powerful magic or figuring out why it is a ghost and fulfilling some specific condition, such as bringing its killer to justice.
3– Serial Killer
Just a normal human, physically anyway. Likely has a consistent M.O., and almost certainly has a specific "type" that they go for. Like, Ted Bundy always picked women who parted their hair down the middle. Has no physical need to kill, so the time between murders is more a matter of willpower and convenience. Will tend to become more brazen over time.
4– Abhorrer
As per Fire on the Velvet Horizon. Since that book doesn't provide stats, try this: It has 4 HD to begin with. It gains one HD every (current HD squared) weeks, assuming nothing happens to help or hinder it; gaining HD is a matter of accumulating wealth and social and political influence, mainly, but it also grows a bit bigger as its HD go up.
Its "no breaking laws of social conventions" effect works on anyone within line of sight, and also passes through barriers within a radius of HD squared times 20 feet. After a few years, its power can effectively prevent anyone from committing a crime anywhere in the city.
Assuming the abhorrer becomes well-known throughout the entire city before it dies, its death will trigger a sudden, massive city-wide crime wave, particularly if it is killed via a scheduled execution. Everyone who wants to commit a crime will simply wait for the moment of its death to do so. Hopefully the party will be smart enough to foresee this.
5– False Hydra
As per this article. 6– Pack of Morlocks
They live underground, in the sewer, caverns or old mines beneath the city. There are 3d10 of them. They venture to the surface to scavenge for supplies, killing only when they need to, either to get supplies or prevent someone who saw them from telling people about them.
I've seen a few versions or morlocks; I like the ones in Esoteric Enterprises best, although you may have to adjust the way they work a bit to match your game's setting and mechanics.
7– A Cult
Maybe it's kidnapping people to sacrifice them, or maybe the leader is just luring vulnerable young people into his orbit so he can build some dumb harem. Probably a bit of both, like the Manson Family. Then again, maybe their god is real. Maybe it's a serious Great Old One cult masquerading as a rather frivolous sex cult.
The party could learn about this by investigating a ritual murder, a person who's been kidnapped, or a person who simply disappeared when they joined the cult.
8– Dopplegangers
They're moving in slowly, one or two at a time, replacing established locals. They started out at the bottom of society, taking the places of a few bums and laborers with few social ties. From there they worked their way up, killing and replacing servants and craftsmen, then minor merchants. Now they're moving on to wealthy merchants and minor nobles. Their ultimate goal is to completely replace the city's ruling class.
The party will most likely learn about this from a merchant or noble who notices that a friend of theirs no longer seems to remember people or events they should be familiar with, and hires the party to investigate. Plot twist: while they're investigating, the person who originally hired them gets replaced by a doppleganger too.
A year ago I played a full-motion video text adventure called The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker. As a full-motion video adventure, it's not the kind of game I usually play, but I loved it and I think I just figured out why.
The game consists entirely of conversations that take place in your psychotherapy office, where you've taken over for the titular doctor. It quickly becomes apparent that there's some seriously Lovecraftian stuff going on, which is awesome but not what make this game incredible.
You see, I enjoy first-person action-RPG's like the new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, and immersive sims like Deus Ex. But I've never found a computer RPG whose dialog wasn't boring as hell, no matter how good the story and characters were. You just click through all of your options, here every single response programmed into the NPC, and move on.
Conversation in computer RPGs isn't challenging. It's not even really a game most of the time; more like a cutscene with a veneer of interactivity.
What makes Dr. Dekker so incredible is that all the conversations are done text adventure style. That means you don't get shown a list of things you can say to the other person; instead there's a massive number of pre-determined things you can say, but they're hidden from you. You type something in, and if what you typed is close to one of those secret lines (mainly if it contains a keyword, I think) you say that thing and get a response.
There's a massive number of dialogue options programmed into the game, but you have to figure them out. There's an option to give you hints for the main ones that you need to advance through the game, but that's it. I ended up finding maybe 70% of them.
All of a sudden, dialogue actually feels like I'm playing a game rather than being walked through a story.
It brings me back to the days of playing games like Zork and The Lurking Horror, (when I discovered them in the 2000's that is; I'm not that old) having to figure out what my options were rather than picking from a limited menu. Can I jump off the roof? Oh shit, guess I can; time to start a new game.
After text adventures gave way to more graphically-impressive formats, computer games lost a lot of their flexibility. With regards to physical actions, a lot of that flexibility has com back over the years, at least in immersive sims like System Shock and Deus Ex.
But dialogue? The conversation mechanics of computer games are still stuck in the dark ages. And they don't need to be. Here's how they can get better.
First, if you've never played text adventures before, try The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, or try Zork or Spider and Web for free in your browser. For how low-tech they are, it's pretty amazing what you can do in them.
As for modern RPGs...they could incorporate this style of interaction, at least on their conversation subsystems. Imagine if, in the next Fallout game, conversation worked like this:
You start a conversation with a shopkeeper. The only options shown are "What do you have in stock" and "Goodbye." But you know there's more to talk about– this town has been getting raided by bandits. So you hold down a button on your controller and say into your microphone "What's going on with the bandits?"
That's not exactly what's programmed into the game, but the voice recognition software recognizes that it's close to something that is. A new conversation option appears for you to select: "What can you tell me about the bandits?"
Now imagine if every NPC you could talk to had secret dialogue options like that– sometimes dozen of them. The only options you'd be given would be super obvious ones like ending the conversation, and maybe asking shopkeepers what they're selling. Everything else you'd have to figure out.
Tabletop RPGs have the same issue a lot of the time. Take 5E for instance– it touts "social" as one of the three pillars of the game, alongside exploration and combat. Except...you're almost never allowed to fail at social challenges. You role-play them, but mostly just for fun, and the outcomes only vary within a small range. Just like computer RPGs.
Social interaction should be important, in both computer and tabletop games. But that means it has to be challenging, there have to be options that you might either miss or fail to execute properly when you do uncover them, and it has to be possible to fail.
A lot of the OSR– if not the mainstream RPG scene– is pretty good at doing this already. But computer games? They don't even try, and they should.
A a few things I came up with for a ritual magic system I'm working on.
The "ritual kit" referenced below is a simple toolkit consisting of candles, magical paints, dyes, paintbrushes and small chisels/awls for engraving runes, incense, fetishes, and other occult paraphernelia. It's not "magical" in itself, and costs twice as much as thieves tools.
Illuminate The Things That Should Not Be
Petty ritual. Casting time: 10 minutes Requirements: a torch, a ritual kit.
The ritualist engraves a few runes into the handle of the torch and sprinkles incense onto the head of the torch while chanting an arcane liturgy. After the ritual is complete, the torch ignites. The magic of the ritual remains active until the torch is extinguished or burns out, typically 2 hours later.
While the torch remains lit, its light causes all extradimensional beings– substantial or not, disguised or not– to glow the color ulfire, which does not normally exist in this dimension.
Anyone who views the color ulfire must save vs magic or suffer d4 temporary wisdom/perception damage. Each person only needs to make this safe once per use of the ritual.
The Conjoined Dreaming of Distant Planes
Potent ritual. Casting time: 4 hours. Requirements: ritual kit, a sapient subject, somewhere comfortable for them to sleep. A relic or body part of a dead person who had contact with the same type of entity you're trying to contact.
Before performing this ritual, the subject of the ritual must spend a day neither speaking, reading, writing nor hearing any language in order to cleanse the mind of human (or humanoid) thought patterns. Once the ritual begins, they must not be spoken to, other than the chants that are actually part of the ritual.
The subject of the ritual lies down and closes their eyes. The ritualist paints a third eye on their forehead, drugs them and lights incense, then recites an occult chant to lull the subject to sleep. The ritualist must declare what being or type of being they wish to contact, from what plane– an elemental from the plane of fire, the demon Bal-Korok, etc.
While the subject sleeps, the ritualist speaks to the, using subliminal messages to guide their mind to a distant plan where the dreamer makes contact with the desired being– or at least, something like it. The ritualist then chants the questions or type of information he wants to know. The contacted being provides answers in the form of dreams– these dreams are always abstract and symbolic, conveying the desired information through metaphor and allegory rather than plan language.
Upon waking, the dreamer suffers d10 damage to a random mental attribute, but can save for half damage. They must then write down everything they dreamt before they forget it. After that, the dreams must be analyzed and deciphered to figure out their meaning.
Cast Down the Reaching Arms of the Earth
Mighty ritual. Casting time: 3 days Requirements: ritual kit, an isolated location within 6 miles of the target area, stones taken from the perimeter of the target area, and a person who lives in the targeted area. That person must either be sacrificed as part of the ritual, or participate in it without knowing its true purpose. Before performing the ritual, all participants must spend a week consuming only food from the targeted area.
This ritual lowers the elevation of a region of several square miles– up to one square mile times the level of the ritual leader. At the end of the ritual, the land within the target area is lowered. Mountains may be flattened, valleys created, but the land may only be lowered as low as the elevation at which the ritual is being conducted, and it may be lowered by no more than the ritual leader's level times 50 meters.
The ritual may be conducted underground, however. Mighty mountain fortresses have been pulled below sea level with this ritual, vibrant ecosystems destroyed by the heat and pressure of low altitudes.
The lowering takes the better part of a day– it causes an earthquake, but it's slow enough that well-built edifices won't be toppled. Just lowered. Usually.
Steal the Fortune of the Summer Court
Casting time: ten minutes. Requirement: ritual kit, one live fae.
The ritualist sacrifices a fae creature and gains some small portion of the luck of faerie. She gains a pool of three re-rolls which can be used whenever she fails a roll. These re-rolls must be used within one lunar cycle.
Credit for this idea comes to the people on the OSR Discord channel who thought of doing fantasy Florida Man headlines. I like the idea so I decided to do a few for every kind of RPG setting I'm into that I can think of.
1. High Fantasy
1. Gondor man mistakenly throws wedding ring into Mordor. One ring still unaccounted for.
2. Paladin sought for murder of beloved local goblin.
3. 23rd Zhentarim agent this year killed trying to infiltrate Shadowdale. This is just tedious, says Elminster.
4. 2 adventurers dead, 3 in critical condition, after taking bag of holding through portable hole.
5. Couple having sex in owlbear costumes killed by adventurers.
6. 1 dead, 4 injured after snorting alchemist's powder.
7. Extensive property damage after dog drinks potion of growth.
8. Thayan turned into zombie by Szass Tam after saying "It's great to be alive." Being dead is cool too, say local newspaper editors.
9. Waterdeep man arrested for selling "potions of heroism" that were actually just cocaine.
10. Candlekeep man assaults identical twins, claiming they're dopplegangers.
2. Sword and Sorcery
1. Man-ape goes on rampage after being referred to as ape-man. 2. Barbarian arrested in fight over local store's "no shoes, no shirt, no service" policy. 3. Local snake cult realizes it's actually been worshipping a giant skink. 4. Kal'thun man wanted for sacrifice after sacrificing friend in argument over human sacrifice.
5. Atlaia sorcerer dragged to hell after sacrificing father to goddess of kinship.
6. Tower of the Elephant evacuated due to mouse infestation.
8. Lankhmar man found dead after trying to swordfight while running across clothesline.
9. Pirate dragged into depths after taunting kraken with piece of fish.
10. Human sacrifice fails after sacred pyramid turns out to be rhomboid in shape
3. Post-Apocalyptic
1. Florida town vaporized after trying to strip copper wire from unexploded Chinese nuke. 2. Vagrant in one-armed leather jacket sought for murder of beloved local warlord. Believed to be former police officer. 3. New Mexico man dies of thirst after locking keys in spike-covered monster truck 4. Florida Man dead after attempting to breed human-radgator hybrids. 5. California man dead after drinking 5 gallons of irradiated water. Unclear if death caused by radiation or hyponatremia, says local meat-man. 6. Cannibal breaks tooth after attempting to eat pre-war mannequin. 7. Ex-con dead after drunk-driving Landmaster off cliff during rad-storm. 8. Kentucky man dead after running out of water, living off whiskey for 6 days. 9. Warboy dies in private duel, forgets to bring witnesses. 10. Bartertown man killed for unauthorized bartering. Master Blaster: I run Bartertown, remember?
4. Urban Fantasy
1. "Monster in the sewers" turns out to be local homeless man. 2. Florida man kicked out of Arby's for homophobic comments about sparkling vampires. 3. West Virginia man arrested after killing "morlock" who just turned out to be black man. 4. Tennessee woman dead after throwing taser at bog-beast, yelling "go back to your country." 5. Local teen dead after trying flight spell from "The Anarchist's Grimoire." 6. Florida woman dead after stabbing self with bogus "dagger of youthfulness." 7. New Mexico town overrun by "meth chupacabras." 8. Wyoming werewolf freezes to death after refusing to wear shirt. 9. 15 witches arrested in brawl over whether magic(k) should be spelled with a k. 10. Florida fortune teller commits suicide after losing fortune on stock market.
5. Horror
1. Fox News anchor apologizes after mocking appearance of Innsmouth locals
2. Haunted house owner kills self in order to become ghost, beat up ghost haunting his house. 3. Welshman lost after entering abandoned castle to search for other lost locals. 4. Missing "golem" statue mysteriously re-appears inside local Jewish Art Museum. Separate headline on same page: Local ex-con beaten to death by unknown assailant. Previously arrested for anti-semitic hate crimes. 5. Croydon man challenges devil to chess match; doesn't know how to play chess. 6. Wannabe DJ trades soul to devil in return for "skill" of playing electronic music. 7. Woman with poor math skills sacrifices 18 dogs to Satan; arrested for animal cruelty after ritual fails. "Six plus six plus six dogs is 666, why didn't it work?" says confused felon. 8. Florida man sells soul to Santa after failing to spell-check contract. 9. Burbank man, kicked out of museum for spitting on mummy, found mysteriously dead. 10. Mississippi man cursed with buckteeth after disturbing local mausoleum.
6. Cyberpunk
1. Florida man arrested after trying to "hack" computers with hacksaw.
2. Texas man shot with anti-tank rifle after trying to rob convenience store.
3. Local man electrocuted, after trying to have sex with girlfriend's datajack.
4. Would-be shadowrunner dies after plotting heist against Renraku over Renraku-owned messaging service.
5. Would-be burglar gets stuck in air vents while trying to enter Mitsuhama Tower. It worked in that Shadowrunner trid show, he reportedly says to police.
6. Man with new cyberarm rips off penis during meth-fueled porn marathon. Got cyberarm installed after ride-on mower accident.
7. Florida man beaten, arrested after trying to strip police robot for parts.
8. New killer robot police recalled after statistical analysis shows persistent pattern of racial discrimination.
9. Fugitive recaptured after "disguising" self with black trench coat, mirrorshades.
10. Florida man bleeds to death after cutting off legs to install home-made cyberlegs.
7. Space Opera
1. Antares man loses legs after holding lightsaber backwards. 2. Two men from Rigel 7 arrested after argument over whether stars are literally "without number" escalates to fistfight. 3. Spice smuggler falls into black hole after trying to break Kessel Run record. Will be visible forever near event horizon. 4. Imperial admiral threatens lawsuit after finding out star destroyers don't destroy stars. 5. Sirius man shoots comedian after being offended by joke. See what we did there? 6. Local woman vaporized after stealing space yacht, engaging hyperdrive inside gravity well. 7. Florida destroyed after Florida man steals gold-rich asteroid, tries to take it home. 8. Unemployed space trucker dead after playing Rigelian Roulette with plasma pistol. 9. Local vagrant dies after swallowing nuclear fuel he was siphoning out of starship. 10. Sith lord found dead, naked in hotel room after presumed autoerotic force-choking incident. 8. Gonzo Science Fantasy
1. Twk-man goes on rampage after being called twink-man. No injuries reported.
2. Very confused car chase breaks out after bard car plays Flagpole Sitta.
3. Nebraska man brings Knife of Unerring Precision to gunfight, wins.
4. Mountebank ambles off escarpment after misconstruing guidance to Mizifelain's Magnificent Mansion.
5. Ascalais man transported into future after garbling words to Vance's Vituperative Voodoo.
6. Woman tries to shoot husband with Profane Pistol of the Betrayer, dies when it backfires.
7. Perverted hedge mage arrested after groping women with "Maramar's magic hand" cantrap
8. Ascalais man clones self with stolen cloning vat, killed by clone in argument over ownership of Ever-Scintillating Hat.
9. Neo-Florida wizard eaten by illegal pet cyber-tiger.
10. Florida woman injured after psy-meth lab grows chicken legs in wake of botched ritual.
Dragons are cool but they suffer from the same problem as trolls, orcs, beholders, and every other iconic fantasy monster: everyone knows exactly how they work and has seen them at least a few times, so they've been completely drained of mystery and (both tactical and thematic) novelty. The challenge in dealing with them now comes mostly from simply having high stats, rather than having to figure anything out or adapt to something new.
Dragons have long since ceased to engender any sense of awe or wonder.
The solution is twofold. First, do away with fixed breeds of dragon (red, bronze, shadow, whatever) and instead give them randomized abilities, much like how I do trolls, or magic weapons for that matter. This means every dragon is unique and, by extension, the combat challenge is likely to be preceded by an investigation challenge as I describe in the troll article.
Second, treat ancient dragons– only the biggest and strongest of the bunch– as inverse swarms. This makes them more complex and probably makes the fights last longer, so this is something you'll probably only want to do for the BBEG of a whole campaign arc. Representing dragons as inverse swarms offers more meaningful tactical choices beyond "How to we reduce its hit points ASAP."
Again, the inverse swarm thing is for Smaug-level epic dragons, more like how dragons usually are in 5E. OSR dragons are often tough but not epic, and totally beatable by a small, low-level party; those ones you should just give the randomized abilities on top of whatever statline dragons normally have in your system.
I'm going to separate the two since you won't always want to do the inverse swarm thing. Do the first part for a unique but non-swarm dragon, do both in the order presented for an inverse swarm dragon.
Generating Your Dragon
Step 1: Hit Dice
Adult (not ancient, not inverse swarm) dragons have 2d6+3 hit dice. Roll hit points normally; as per Swords and Wizardry, they should have treasure as if their HD were twice as high.
Ancient dragons have 2d6+6 hit dice. They save as a monster of that many HD, but don't roll hit points normally if you're treating them as inverse swarms. Treasure as if their HD were 3 times as high, XP as if it were twice as high.
Step 2: Breed
Not as in red vs blue or whatever. Different cultures have different dragons, so why limit yourself to European ones? Roll a d4.
1: Western dragon. Reduce all damage by 2 for adults dragons. For ancient dragons, reduce damage to the torso by 3, the wings by 1, and other body parts by 2.
2: Eastern dragon. Has prophetic powers; will know the players are coming and have a rough idea of party composition (though not their exact plans). Reroll the first critical failure each day. If it can talk, it might trade prophecy for protection with a local lord.
3: Feathered serpent. Looks fabulous. Also, worshipped by a cult of 4d10 zealots. 1 HD each, poor training and equipment but very high morale.
4: Leviathan. Can breathe underwater and swim as fast as it flies. Its lair will be near the water; it will escape into the water if it starts losing the battle, unless you cut of its escape route.
If you really want to make this interesting, you could get into stuff like three-headed dragons, wingless Godzilla or Jormundgandr types, or shadow dragons or cyborg dragons. I chose to keep this part (relatively) simple.
Step 3: Can it talk?
You may want to decide this by fiat, but otherwise the chance a dragon can talk is HDx5%.
Step 4: Breath Weapon
Breath weapons come in 3 varieties: a 5 foot line, a cone, or a circular cloud centered a few squares in front of the dragon. You decide on the range based on what fits your system and your game. Adult dragon breath weapons do 3d6 damage, or whatever they normally do in your system. Ancient dragons do 4d6. Some breath weapons don't do damage, and instead inflict status conditions
Roll a d20 for type of breath weapon:
1-4: Fire, cone
5: Ice, cone
6-7: Lightning, line
8-9: Acid, line
10: Poison, cloud
11: Paralysis gas, cloud
12: Sleep gas, cloud
13: Confusion gas, cloud
14: Slowing gas, cloud
15: Berserk gas (makes you attack indiscriminately, including allies), cloud
16: Charm gas, cloud
17: Scalding steam, cloud (obscures vision for one round)
18: Smoke, cloud (obscures vision for a minute, the dragon can see through it)
19: Fear gas, cloud
20: Two breath weapons. Re-roll on this table twice, re-rolling if you get this again.
Step 5: Special Abilities
Roll a d12. Roll twice if the dragon has 10 or more HD.
1: Casts spells as a magic user of level d4, +1 level per 5 HD. Also can speak. Must speak to cast spells, but doesn't need material components.
2: Can shape-shift into humans or common animals.
3: Telepathy and low-level telekinesis. Can read surface thoughts.
4: Can turn invisible. Becomes visible if it attacks, and movement isn't silent.
5: Regenerates 3 hp/round, or for inverse swarm, 2 HP to the torso and 1 to each other part.
6: Fearful presence. Every enemy must save or be terrified once per encounter.
7: Cloud form. Can turn into a cloud, move at walking speed, immune to most normal damage in this form.
8: Paralyzing gaze.
9: This dragon is undead, with all the upsides and downsides that implies.
10: True sight.
11: Magic resistance.
12: Has d3 children of d6 HD each. As normal dragons of whatever type is closest to the parent.
Step 6: Lair Qualities
Roll a d12. Roll twice if the dragon has 15 HD or more.
1- Traps all over the place.
2- The lair and its entrances are very well-hidden
3- The lair is at the top of a big, steep mountain
4- The lair lays a curse on all who enter unless they meet a very specific condition
5- Load-bearing boss. The lair will collapse shortly after the dragon dies. The treasure hoard should still be accessible afterward, somehow, if you survive. Don't be a dick about this.
6- The lair is full of environmental hazards like lava or spikes.
7- The dragon can scry, at will, anywhere within a mile of the lair.
8- The dragon can control animals in the area.
9- The dragon can control plants in the area.
10- The lair is full of noxious fumes, which the dragon is immune to.
11- The dragon can control the weather in the area.
12- The lair can only be accessed by going through a sizable dungeon, or flying in through the ceiling. The local dwarves might know a secret entrance...
Step 7: Color
Roll a d20:
1: Red
2: Blue
3: White
4: Green
5: Black
6: Gold
7: Silver
8: Copper/Bronze
9: Yellow
10: Purple
11: Changes with the dragon's mood like a mood ring
12: Shadowy
13: Semi-transparent
14-19: The color you would expect based on the dragon's abilities and standard D&D dragon colors
20: A mix of colors, re-roll twice
Ancient Dragon Inverse Swarm Stats
We'll break the dragon down into five parts: The head/neck, torso, legs, wings and tail. For simplicity's sake we'll treat all four legs as one part and both wings as one part.
To give players a reason to engage the whole body rather than focusing all their attacks on one part at a time, the individual body parts become less capable as they lose HP. The HP totals, and perhaps the damage of the dragon's attacks, may need to be adjusted depending on your system.
Ancient dragons are probably around 20-40 feet long, 15-25 feet wide, and 15-25 feet tall when standing on all fours. When standing up, the legs, tail and torso are in normal melee range, the head (well, base of the neck, but that's the head for game purposes) can be reached by reach weapons like halberds, and the wings are totally out of melee range. The head and wings can be brought lower by knocking out the legs first, which will be described under legs.
Head
Hit points: HD x 4
AC: As plate. This is about half due to armored scales and half due to being able to dodge attacks. Reduced to as chain if the legs are reduced to 0 HP.
Actions: One of the following each turn
Bite: d12 + grapple at enemies in front of or to the side of the dragon. Grappled characters can try to escape on their turn. If still grappled on the dragon's next turn, the dragon's next bite automatically hits them.
Throw: Toss a grappled character up to 30 feet.
Breath weapon: Inflicts 4d6 damage, aimed in front or to the side. Can be used up to 3 times a day, and only once every 3rd round.
Cast spells, if the dragon can do that.
Talk, if the dragon can do that. It can utter a few free words as a free action. Longer speeches take the head's action for that round.
If damaged:
When reduced to half HP, the breath weapon does only 3d6 damage, the bite no longer grapples, and spells have a 2 in 6 chance of failure. At zero HP, the dragon dies.
Torso
Hit points: HD x 8
AC: As plate.
Actions: None
If Damaged:
When reduced to half HP, all of the dragon's attacks do a die size lower.
When reduced to one quarter HP, the dragon can no longer use its breath weapon, and all movement rates are reduced by 10 feet.
At zero HP, the dragon is dead.
Legs
Hit points: HD x 4
AC: As plate
Actions: One of the following each turn
2 claw attacks at 1d8 each at enemies in front of the dragon
Move up to 60 feet
Move up to 30 feet, plus 1 claw attack at 1d8
If damaged:
At half HP, can either make one claw attack or move 30 feet.
At ten HP, can't walk or claw.
At zero HP, can't even stand. The head is now within melee range, and the wings within reach weapon range, for human-sized characters. Need a whole round to start flying without a jumping start.
Tail
Hit points: HD x 2
AC: As chain
Actions: One of the following per turn
Tail whack: d8 damage plus push up to 10 feet against one enemy in a 120 degree arc behind the dragon.
Tail sweep: Everyone in a 90 degree arc within 10 feet behind the dragon must save or take 1d6 damage and be pushed 15 feet (all in the same direction)
If damaged:
At half HP, reduce damage dize size for tail attacks by one, and tail attacks only push five feet.
At zero HP, no tail attacks, and the dragon has impaired balance. Must make a DEX check to avoid staggering when it moves.
Wings
Hit points: HD x 2
AC: As leather
Actions: One of the following per turn
Fly: Up to 60 feet on the first round and 120 on subsequent rounds.
Wing beat: All characters immediately to the side of the dragon (8 to 10 and 2 to 4 o'clock) of the dragon must make a DEX save or save vs breath weapon or take 1d6 damage and be knocked down.
If damaged
At half HP, it takes an entire turn to start flying, i.e. can't move at all on the first turn spent flying. Flight speed reduced to 90, wing beat damage reduced to 1d6 and no longer knocks down. If legs are also at half HP or less, can't fly.
At zero HP, can't fly or wing beat.
How to Slay Dragons
A party facing an inverse swarm dragon has several distinct strategies they can follow to kill said dragon.
1– Focus entirely on the torso.
2– Take out the legs, then the head.
3– Using ranged weapons or some clever tactic, go straight for the head without crippling the legs first.
4– Take out the wings and/or tail, then do one of the first three.
Ideally none of these should be obviously superior to the others. You may have already figured this out, but there's a potential monkey wrench here: damage-dealing spells.
Any system that has high-damage spells like lightning bolt makes option 3, going straight for the head, too easy. Giving the head more HP really screws archers over, so the best solution here is probably to give the head resistance to magical damage. That is, it takes half damage from damaging spells, but disabling spells work as normal.
Speaking of spells, single-target spells like hold monster might have to target one particular body part, at the referee's discretion. Mental enchantments have to target the head obviously, though controlling the dragon's mind does let you control the whole body.
Another thing you may have noted is that between having attacks that "fire" at different angles and wanting to force the party to spread out its attacks, the dragon counterintuitively benefits from being surrounded. To counteract this, you should give characters serious bonuses for flanking the dragon, maybe even advantage on attacks
If you implement all of this: the unique dragon abilities, inverse swarm rules, and lair qualities– taking down an ancient dragon should become a three or four-phase adventure. First your players research the dragon by investigating the sites of previous attacks and interviewing survivors to learn the dragon's abilities. Possibly they have to whittle down some allies of the dragon, if it has a following. Then they scout out it's lair, maybe killing more followers in the process or just carefully clearing traps. Then finally they fight the dragon.
And when fighting the dragon, the fight becomes more than just whittling down a pool of hit points. The party will be trying to systematically cripple body parts one by one while preventing the dragon's escape. Or maybe letting it escape, it can't take the treasure with it after all.
The dragon will be trying to corral the party so it can hit them with AoE attacks, prevent them from focusing on one body part at a time, and take advantage of environmental features by, say, flying or funneling you into a corridor and hitting you with a breath weapon, or knocking people off cliffs. If it's losing, the dragon will probably try to escape.
It takes a little extra work to pull this off, but done right, the combination of a really unique monster, a tactically interesting fight, and the whole thing having significant build-up can create the kind of session that produces years of fond memories and "Dude, how awesome was it when we fought that dragon" type discussions.
If you end up using this, please share your experience in the comments!
