Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Villain Profile - The Beast from Kill the Beast by Victor Cheng

Villain profiles return!  In my quest to promote more amateur gamebooks, I will look at a villain from a book I've found on www.ffproject.com.  I will mention these great amateur books in future posts.  The Beast is from Kill the Beast by Victor Cheng who has also written In the Footsteps of a Hero.  So, on with The Beast.

Appears in

Kill the Beast by Victor Cheng.  No prizes for guessing what the aim of the book is.

Background

You are a villager who is plodding along fine until The Beast comes from nowhere and crushes houses and crops.  It also carries off some of your fellow villagers.  You are tasked with going to a nearby town and hiring someone who can kill it.
The Beast has a thick soil coloured hide that resists blows.It also has 'tentacles, primitive limbs and big eyes – dreadful, demonic eyes.' It is also described as a 'great barrel of a creature' with a 'toothy maw'

Prominence

The beast is roaming around the countryside and can strike at any time.  This fact is made more terrifying by the fact that The Beast can burrow under the earth and can burst out of the ground in front of you at any time.  Now that's a surprise you don't want.  7/10

Hardness

The Beast's toothy maw and its many tentacles and limbs make it an extremely dangerous foe.  It has a skill of 12 and a stamina of 15.  It also has a thick hide that '... seems to be made of the Earth itself'.  Damage dealt against The Beast in combat is reduced by 1 point.  Besting it in combat will definately be difficult.  Your skill is between 5 and 7, so it will be suicide to take the Beast on yourself which is why you hire someone else to do it.  However, along the way, you may get a chance to weaken it and reduce its skill which will go a long way.  The trick to killing the beast is reducing its skill so that if you get someone who can hit it constantly then they will gradually wear it down.  It takes some luck and good judgement to do this, however.  7/10

Ambition

The Beast does not seem to want to do anything beyond wrecking the countryside and eating people.  5/10

Style

As beasts go, this one definitely seems unique (bonus point).  It's origin story is not explained, but I imagine it to be some kind of abandoned cosmic horror or the failed experiment of a mad wizard or an animal that has been mutated by evil magic or evil substances.  However, being a Beast means that it's not going to be an urbane Bond villain any time soon.  Of course, that also means that its actually going to kill someone.  6/10

Diabolical genius

Like Hate, there is no evidence of The Beast being sentient (of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I'm going on the source material here.  of course, if Victor says that it is, then that's a different matter.)  1/10

Total score

It is not something that you want to come across, but it's not going to come up with a master plan to destroy the world any time soon.  26/50

Monday, October 5, 2015

E0 rules for DnD 5th edition

A little while ago, I published E2 rules for 5th edition DnD. Now I've gone to the logical extreme and turned them into E0 rules - characters are all "0 level" and only advance by feats. This is similar to how my Legend of the Wayfarer rules work. The only levelled characters in this world are "gods" who go to levels 1-5. I may work out the "god" class later on (it will be quite close to the bard class).

Roll your abilities

You can use whatever method you like, but I'm going for the DCC way of 3d6 in order (but I'm doing this for 2-4 characters per player, so at least one will be good).

Each character has 12 hit points + CON modifier.

Each character has a +2 proficiency bonus.

Choose your racial benefits

My world is human centric so they are the only option (of course, you can use whatever races you like). To increase variety amongst characters, I will use the variant human traits (PHB page 31) where you can increase two scores by 1 point, gain proficiency in one skill and gain 1 feat (PHB page 165).

Choose background

Also choose other details and equipment (you can use Bernie's random tables)

Choose feats

In addition to their human feat, players can now choose 3 extra feats.

Advancement

The character can then improve for every 500xp they get. The character gets to choose whether to get 2 ability points either for one ability or split between 2 ability scores OR they can get another feat. Bear in mind that some feats are of limited or no use in this world.

Rule changes

Skills are no longer tied to any stat and multiple skills could help with a particular roll.